


The Devil's Dues

by DragonWarden



Series: The Devil's Dues [1]
Category: Tron (Movies), Tron - All Media Types, Tron: Legacy (2010)
Genre: Gen, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-01
Updated: 2012-03-10
Packaged: 2017-10-22 02:28:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 39,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/232710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonWarden/pseuds/DragonWarden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn't so much that hope died, but that Sam realized it had only been wishful thinking all along.</p><p>For Winzler and Stalkingbit, and the prompt (misinterpreted):</p><p>The world ends. Nuclear wasteland, Mad Max style, etc. One day Sam comes out of the computer and everything is gone. The power will run out soon/the arcade is in danger/etc so Sam hurriedly brings a recovering Tron(zler) out to save him.</p><p>Tron is OK at first but slowly reverts to Rinzler under the stress of survival — and Sam eventually begins to lose it as well. In the end we’re left with 2 bugfuck crazy survivalist murdermachines roaming the wasteland together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wtb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wtb/gifts), [noctaval](https://archiveofourown.org/users/noctaval/gifts).



> I must be nuts, starting this before I've even made it halfway through The Sea Like the Stars. But I apparently revel in my illogic, as I have gone ahead and done it, and I'm making even fewer promises as to the updates to this tale. The premise had just seemed way too fun to let pass without something to mark it, even if I did misremember some details and then gleefully ignored the rest.

The tableau was this:

Sam, laid out on his stomach, still spitting dust from when he had been mashed face-first into the yellow, packed earth next to the road. One arm wrenched up behind his back, someone's knee digging painfully into his spine just below that, and cold metal resting far too comfortably at the nape of his neck.

Tron, still standing, still free, but looking as miserable as if he was the one pinned like a bug on a board as he stared at Sam. His hands were clenched at his sides, arms half-cocked with tension - in one fist, a hunting knife, in the other, a long-tubed flashlight; long since broken, but whose heft with all the batteries inside was satisfying. On either side of him, two ragged figures stood a wary distance, their bodies crouched and cautious. Behind him lay another two dark shapes, unmoving.

"Jesus Christ, looks like your friend's finally gotten the memo," a voice above Sam noted, the rasp of desperation turning the humor cruel, words muffled by a swollen nose; broken by Sam's elbow. "We were just gonna shake you down for your supplies, no harm, no foul, but you hadta go and lay in on poor Danny and Phil - "

Sam tried to crane his head that fraction of an inch higher, chin scraping painfully on the sandy grains, to catch Tron's gaze squarely. The former security program knew better than to give them away with a headshake, but his eyes pleaded with Sam.

" - can't leave someone like him at our backs, can we, boys?"

As soon as they had encountered the gang, Sam knew it would be their lives at stake - the only difference would be in how quickly the end would come if they did not manage to win out. If their meager supplies were taken, then it might be a few slow days of thirst or starvation if they didn't manage to find something else to scavenge in that time. If the gang was particularly vicious, or looking for sport, then it would be even quicker than that. Thus, the grim outcomes already mapped, Sam had felt only the vaguest need to hold back.

Tron still had reservations, though. He clearly held Sam's wellbeing as his top priority, but what was he to do when defending one user meant fighting a host of others? Practicality had won out so far, and Sam knew, even if his captor didn't, that the two behind Tron were unconscious and most likely not seriously hurt. When he had the luxury, Tron knew enough about user anatomy now to ensure that much.

But when they couldn't afford that luxury ...

"Sorry," the man said, sounding anything but. "Get 'im, boys."

The men advanced, and Tron tensed, but Sam could see the program's gaze fixed unblinkingly upon him - resigned. Waiting.

Sam licked cracked lips, drew a breath against the pressure upon his back, tried to ignore that ominous chill at his neck, and croaked, "Release Rinzler."

* * *

It had begun with the disorienting sensation of the universe _blinking_ , as if reality itself had just shivered; like the after-image of lightning caught from the corners of the eyes, for a moment leaving the mind still and quiet, counting the seconds to see if thunder would follow.

Tron had broken off mid-word, so Sam knew he had not wholly imagined it, and he was just about to ask what had happened when the game arena's unhurried, dulcet tones rang out with the echo of dozens of other WAV players throughout Tron City. "Warning. Warning. Main power source interrupted ... switching to UPS. Attention, now running on UPS - "

"Sam - "

"No, Tron, it's okay," he answered quickly, struggling to swallow his heart back down his throat at averted catastrophes. UPS ... they were running on the uninterruptable power supply now. Thank god he had made time to crawl through some of the hardware just the month before and dragged in one of those overweight batteries - who knew what would have happened if he had been on the Grid and a blackout took down the aging systems. "At full charge, the UPS should give us at least another ten minutes top-side; plenty of time for me to get out and call the power company to see what's - "

" - now running on UPS. Warning, UPS charge at 70% ... 69.8% ... 69.4% ... power drain analyzed. Prioritizing. Molecular digitizing laser scheduled for shut down in twenty-five microcycles. Warning, main power source interrupted, now running on UPS - "

And Sam felt his heart leap right back up into his throat. There was not enough color definition for him to tell for sure, but he was fairly certain that Tron would blanch as pale as he felt, if the program was capable of doing so. "The portal," the security program breathed before he was snatching up both of his batons, flinging one to Sam.

He didn't bother protesting the presumption, reflex snatching the offering from the air before he could even think about going for his own, and almost before he could finally arrange his thoughts back into shape they were already speeding out of the arena, whipping by a group of bewildered-looking programs as they milled in confusion at the system-wide warnings. "You lead, I need to reprioritize!" he called out over the hum of the bikes.

"The priority is getting you to the portal!" Tron retorted with predictable stubbornness.

"We'll never make it in twenty-five microcycles! I need to shuffle the laser to the top of the priority list!"

Tron could make the calculations as quickly as he, and his conclusions caused the security program to falter just enough for Sam to catch up; the two of them now racing side by side through corridors so familiar that instinct alone was enough to put them on the shortest path to the city limits. "It will be close," came the anxious assessment.

"Very close," Sam had to admit with a grimace. Damn it, why hadn't he also factored in just how much power the portal and laser on standby would require from the backup in _last_ month's setup instead of penciling it in for the _next_? At the rate that the laser was draining the UPS, if it was kept open with enough juice left over to reconstitute him on the other side, it would leave the UPS only a minute or so to shut down the server gracefully; give or take some comparatively big error bars. All computer-based estimations of time and power tended to slop a little, and they were already cutting it pretty fine. "Where's Quorra?"

"In Sector Epsilon-Three," Tron answered in heavy tones. Sam felt his own stomach drop as well; that was nearly clear across the city in the opposite direction.

"She won't have time, then," Sam verbalized both their thoughts as he grudgingly accessed his helmet's HUD. At least he had the reassurance that, as a true native of the Grid in a way that even Tron was not, Quorra would most likely weather the shut-down with no problems.

Just shy of thirty microcycles later, they were navigating the less traveled roads outside of Tron City and leaving the system messages behind; the steady countdown on the UPS charge levels evidence of his successful rearrangement of the shutdown prioritizations. "What would happen if you were still on the grid during the shutdown?"

Sam had known Tron wouldn't be able to leave that alone. "Doesn't matter," he gritted out, dodging the spirit of the question. "Ain't gonna happen."

"Hypothetically."

Stoic and stern, the security program made a frighteningly effective watchdog. Much to his chagrin, Sam had begun to discover over the last few weeks that the metaphor also stretched to cover Tron's inability to let anything go once he had sunk his teeth into a thought. "Look, I don't know and I'm not aiming to find out, all right? I mean, I've got an identity disc just like everyone else. It'd probably be the same for me as everybody," he dismissed as casually as he could.

Sam felt slightly guilty for the silence that followed his terse response, but he could always apologize later after he got the whole power situation sorted out. There were priorities, after all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> People have been so great and understanding! Now I wish I could write fic for you all, all day long. =(
> 
> Instead, I'm throwing something quick out and then abandoning you all for several days. >.>
> 
> Sorry if I abstracted the action quite a bit - I'm just as eager for detailed pwnage as the next fan, but this style was more in line with the flavor I'm trying to keep for this piece. I'll try to make up for it in The Sea. =)

Sam was careful to work the rusty red grime from around the edges of Rinzler's fingernails, trying to ignore that steady, empty stare fixed upon the top of his bowed head. He was using more of their water than he really should - even with his careful soaking of the cloth's corners so that not a drop was wasted on the parched ground - but with the inclusion of the would-be thieves' supplies with their own, he figured he was justified in at least ensuring that Tron would not have to see user blood on his hands.

 _Tron would never have risked Sam like that, but Sam was equally unwilling to risk his companion. And so, when the men had advanced on a Tron bound as surely by a hostage as by steel chains, he had unleashed Rinzler, and watched as emotion drained from that familiar, trusted face._

He examined his handiwork one last time and, finally satisfied, he folded the rag over - hiding the stains inside the folds - before stepping back. Eyeing the somber figure before him, he took a deep breath, and then stated quietly, "We made it, Tron."

 _Rinzler moved so quickly that the weight upon Sam's back started, and the smooth nose of the gun that had been pressed to his neck disappeared._ I'm going to live, _Sam realized with pounding heart, throat so dry he nearly choked on the air. In that split second, everything could have ended with a bullet in the back of the head, but instead, Rinzler had lunged right past the two men as if they didn't even exist, the weapon jerked up out of sheer reflex, and the gunman lost his chance. He would not get another._

A blink, two, and with awareness came confusion. When Tron glanced down at his hands and feet before the bemusement had even fully faded, Sam had to turn away, jaw clenched. 

Once upon a time, the program had looked to his surroundings first to ground himself after a switch. Now, before he had even fully loaded, he looked for evidence of what he had done.

 _The man managed a single shot, the bullet going wide, before a shadow leaped over them and his weight toppled off of Sam with a wet gurgle. The two that remained standing might have run if given the chance, their eyes wide and staring - disbelieving, terrified - hands and makeshift weapons still half-raised from when they had thought their prey trapped. But Rinzler had twisted about with feral grace to pin them with that dead look, and one of them broke with a wavering cry that galvanized them both into stumbling forward, swinging._

"Wait!" he said too quickly when Tron was about to turn and look behind him, then cleared his throat roughly before forcing a grin that felt awkward even to himself. "We've already wasted enough time here and my feet are killing me. I think a sign said there would be a gas station in a mile or two. We should try to get there before the sun sets."

* * *

As any good programmer knew, before modifying anything, make sure you had a backup. Possibly even a backup of the backup, placed in a separate location, depending on how paranoid you were. Segregate before you deleted something permanently, and if you had the time, wait a few weeks to see if you would miss it.

Going through someone else's programs - particularly when it involved several coding styles and had even worse commenting conventions than Encom's interns - was never an easy proposition. Rather than attempt to modify it all in one marathon run while at the same time taking over the reigns of his father's company, Sam had decided to take a shortcut: Mark all that was Rinzler. Shove it to one corner. Fill in what gaps there were with what copies and backups he could find of the Tron program from its first instantiation upon the grid, before the advent of Clu 2.0.

Of course, this also meant that Tron would lose access to all those memories which Rinzler had produced. Sure, there would be shadows left over - Tron had, after all, managed to win through his conditioning in little fits and spurts - but those foggy impressions which were untouched by that error-red luminance of something gone wrong, Sam left alone. More or less, he was _the_ original Tron, in character if not in appearance, with just enough experience to manage a fully developed Grid 2.0.

Sam would have been happy to simply chuck everything in that box labeled "Rinzler" into the recycle bin and then hit "empty", but when a month had passed after the segregation and it was apparent that Tron was running just fine, the security program stopped him before he hit the proverbial button.

"I wish to at least integrate the memories."

Sam had stared outright. "What?"

Tron's jaw tightened, circuits flickering with apprehension, but then squared his shoulders and looked every inch the hero that had once decorated a younger Sam's shelves. "Because they are a part of me. That is who I was for over a thousand cycles. I deserve to keep them."

Sam tried to keep the bewildered exasperation from his voice as he asked, "But it _wasn't_ you. Do you think you deserve them because you _want_ them, or that you _deserve_ them because they're your just desserts? C'mon - no one blames you for what happened now that they know what _really_ happened ... well, okay, _most_ of them don't, and the rest are coming around now that they're remembering the old Tron again. Just give it some time and - "

Tron exhaled; a put-upon huff that was purely cosmetic from a program that had never required air. Sam tried to imagine his father doing that enough times for a program to pick up the habit, and then resolutely tucked the thought away for later contemplation. Hopefully with a bottle or two of beer at hand. "Regardless, from a purely practical standpoint, my memories would be a thousand cycles out of sync with the history of the Grid. How will I patrol - "

"I can upload maps straight into your core - "

" - who do I know I can trust - "

" - I'm working on some filters top-side that can probably weed out the - "

" - are reliable - "

" - it shouldn't take _that_ long to shake down a new system - I mean, c'mon! I'm going through the exact same thing with Encom right now and lemme tell you, it's no sweat if you've got the right - "

"Sam."

He stuttered to a stop, momentarily at a loss. "It's not going to be all rainbows and unicorns," he warned with desperate bluntness, "this isn't the sort of stuff that goes into Aunt Mathilda's family albums."

Tron looked perplexed for a moment, but then bravely forged ahead. "I know. Which is why it's all the more critical that I do this."

Sam released his own exasperated sigh. "Then, why? The _real_ why. It's going to be a lot of work, and ... and I've got no clue how it'll all end up - how _you'll_ end up."

"I know. I didn't want to ask, except - " Tron hesitated, head bowing, before he finished quietly, "It's because, even with all the miserable things I became under Clu's reign, not one of them was a coward. Please, Sam Flynn ... I do not want to become one now."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I can say I know where I want this to end up, but I'm still trying to figure out exactly how to get there, which is kind of funny, because it's almost the complete opposite with The Sea. Sorry this chapter's short and meanders a bit, but turning the course of a cruise liner might take some time! Nevertheless, we will get to the destination eventually (or so I hope).
> 
> I haven't been idle between this, being half-done with another chapter of The Sea, and working madly on a third independent writing project which was actually started long before I started dipping my toes in Tron fandom. It has also been quite, quite eventful between my usual RL and, just as I happen to be visiting NC for the first time after two years, not only an "unseasonable" earthquake but my first hurricane to boot. I'm guessing I may get a lot of excuses to write while hunkering down for the duration. =)
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has been reviewing! I'm still woefully behind at responding D: but I will continue to try and peck away at it.

A man stood upon the porch with a gun. His eyes were blood-shot and crazed, his hair unkempt, clothes stained and wrinkled. He still had most of his hair - mostly dark - and the un-wrinkled hands spoke of middle age; but the stooped shoulders, palsied shake of hands, and defeated air made him look like an ancient instead.

"Not one step closer!"

Sam looked between the gun and the untidy row of three crosses in the front yard - the suburban lawn overgrown and yellowed in alternating, scabrous patches - before holding up his hands and backing away. "Whatever you want, Sir," he called without argument, and glanced away only long enough to ensure that the shadow of Tron was following him before he continued down the road once more.

"He looked like there is nothing left but the killing blow."

Sam turned that unassuming comment over and over in his mind, trying to divine the motivation behind it. In the early days, he would have simply thought it a part of Tron's natural curiosity; an observation around which a conversation might form, leading toward things that the program did not know enough yet to ask about directly.

These days, when Tron often did not respond verbally at all, much less ask the questions which needed asking, Sam could not help worrying at the little non sequitars, wondering if they were symptoms of something he did not yet know how to diagnose. Should he be concerned that Tron had substituted concepts of killing and death for deresolution so quickly? Did Tron mean to imply that they should have provided the man that final mercy? Was he disappointed in this latest example of the fall of the once revered users?

Or maybe Sam was simply overthinking things. God knew they had way too much time in which to make that mistake these days. "That was probably his family he buried - think it's enough to give the guy his peace. We've enough supplies to last another day or two."

As the third largest country and also the third largest population in the world, it was a difficult prospect to wipe the United States off the map overnight. But someone had certainly given it a good try, and even included quite a few other countries for good measure ... or so hearsay indicated.

Some said it was anarchist hackers, taking over the world's supply of nuclear arms, and sending them across all the developed nations, willy nilly, to reset civilization.

Some said it was some secret society from the days of the Nazis, developing a plague along with sleeper agents that had infiltrated the highest levels of all the nuclear-capable nations over the last half-century.

Some said it was an extraterrestrial social experiment; that the fire had not come from ourselves, but out of the heavens.

There were, of course, also the requisite stable of religious interpretations.

Sam didn't know what people were more terrified by - the fact that civilization as they had known it had ended, or that nobody seemed to know exactly what had happened or why. There were no doubts of nuclear bombardment alongside the usual explosives; there were a few lucky - or unlucky - souls who had survived on the peripheries and lived to wander and tell the tale, bearing the scars of radiation burns. Sickness claimed the swathes of populations in between the missile strikes, and that alone had hosted its own library of theories; everything from a super-bug evolved from careless research labs or the over-application of antibiotics to bioweapons.

Sam had been one of the lucky ones. He had woken, lucid, after four days of delerium, to find Tron's anxious face hovering over him; as frightened as he had ever seen the program.

Tron had never gotten sick at all.

In the end, the only thing anyone had been sure about, was that the country had been reduced overnight into scattered tribes numbering fewer than the Neanderthals in their heydey, and there had not been enough left of the rest of the world to either be willing or able to offer aid.

So Sam had started walking, searching for the largest population centers, and Tron had followed. He didn't even know what he hoped to find along with the people anymore, because it had become increasingly apparent that the people were not even half as familiar as the broken landmarks when survival became about finding water that would not poison you and not about making it into the office by 9 am. All he knew was that he had a former program walking beside him and the skeletal outlines of an alternative civilization tucked away in a thumb drive hanging around his neck, and maybe, just maybe, he could find a way to bring it all back again.

Whether it was the world he had known or the Grid - he tried very hard not to think about that particular question in their copious free time.

* * *

Sam received his first hint that it was more than just a power outtage when he tried to tap the satellite link and it returned the deceptively innocuous message of: _No connection._

As much of a daredevil as he was, he had learned the valuable lesson of having back-up plans in place when possible - particularly after his father's historic example - and so he had set up an external communications line for when they were both on the Grid together. Cell reception around the arcade was sometimes chancy with all the old, solid brick and steel architecture surrounding it, and so when some techie friends had been looking to off-load a used satellite handset, he had thought it would be the perfect solution. With an antenna extended to the roof where it had unobstructed access to the sky, he did not need to depend on local cell towers, reception, or for cellular rush-hour traffic to clear.

Except that there was no satellite link. Had something happened to the handset or antenna at the same time as the power?

Shut-down procedures had started before they reached the I/O tower, but the wave which overtook the city slowed measurably when it hit the outlands; as if the simple vector definitions of the sleek buildings were easier to stow away than the ordered chaos beyond city limits. So Sam and Tron had time to stand upon the I/O platform and watch as the world packed itself away in four-dimensional origami folds; voxels collapsing into each other in dizzying cascades, tucked safely into some pocket dimension which defied focus no matter how much Sam squinted at the advancing boundary.

"What will happen to you?" he abruptly thought to ask as the Sea of Simulation began succumbing to the void; the half digitized interpretation of The Great Wave of Kanagawa rendered before their very eyes.

Tron did not move, his gaze riveted upon that yawning darkness swallowing his world. "I do not know. I think - I imagine that it would be like entering a downcycle. I will probably never know it, until the next time I was back online."

Sam tried to visualize that. Tried to imagine Quorra and thousands of other programs going to sleep, not knowing when the next time they would wake will be. For an exhilarating, terrifying moment, his imagination ran away with him, and he thought of _never_ waking ... of the millions of hard drives scattered around the world with programs stored away, collecting dust in bins and on shelves and in old rusting computer cases which would never be turned on again, would possibly even be recycled ...

And, on a whim, blurted, "Want to come with me?"


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Moar details this time! And because I seem physically incapable of writing anything that doesn't have some hint of plot in it, there's a whisper of it here but a more proper start of it will be in the next part. But don't worry about happy endings - this is just the rise before the fall, I promise. =)
> 
> I'm half-considering putting The Sea on hold until I get this one done. I'm finding it a little hard to keep all the details of the two worlds I've built up in my head straight and this one's beginning to take on more shapes than I had planned, though maybe I'll push out one more chapter of The Sea before focusing completely on this.
> 
> Winzler, there may or may not be a nod to your pancake comment if you squint hard enough cuz it tickled me to death and I couldn't get it out of my head. Now I want pancakes. =(

They reached the Golden Gate Bridge as the fog was rolling over the hills like giant breakers, tinted gold and cotton candy hues by the setting sun. Tron stared with more fascination than he had showed for anything in weeks, and Sam was now glad he had made the detour from the interstate to approach San Francisco from the north, even if the car he had lifted had run out of gas halfway through the Napa Valley.

He had lost track of the date a week or two ago, but judged it to be straddling the divide somewhere between October and November. In spite of the sea chill, it was still warmer than what he could have hoped for in the northern climes at this time of the year. As much as he loved the Pacific Northwest, he was ill equipped to learn winter survival techniques on the fly with no guides, no Google, and incomplete gear.

"I thought clouds were composed of water droplets that are lighter than air?"

Not to mention a dependent. Though, some days, he had to wonder who was more dependent on whom as he surreptitiously stretched stiff muscles. Tron looked only slightly stooped beneath his burden after a day's worth of walking, and even then, it might have been as much from distraction as fatigue. "They are. But these are heavier, so they sink." Tron looked pensively toward the ocean just behind them, and Sam amended, "But not heavy enough to sink all the way. Uh, not that they weigh differently. They're just bigger. The droplets, I mean." He thought for a moment, then mimed squinting through the space between thumb and index finger in illustration.

Tron watched his actions dubiously before proposing, "So, there is a gradient?"

"Yeah, something like that," Sam agreed readily, clapping the program on the shoulder as he shuffled past, hopping a bit to warm up again as they started the trek across the bridge.

Portland had been a pleasant stop - gun-wielding neighbors aside - with all the major structures still upright and most of the damage coming only from past riots or scavenging. It was easy to see why people had liked to settle there as a lifestyle choice before the world ended, even if he personally preferred more night-life. But while Portland had been more habitable than Seattle - flatter than ever now, after a few bombs - it had its downsides too.

After all, there were no municipal services left to do a proper clean-up of the remaining bodies, even if the local flora and fauna had made a valiant effort.

Sam had pushed on after spending only a week there; even if it was rare for snow to fall in the city, the draw of Silicon Valley's vast electronic resources was too tantalizing to be ignored. He didn't expect much - if anything - to be running, but perhaps with some ingenuity, he could get some basic services going. There might have been several priorities he should have put ahead of computing power, but as long as he was still able to scrounge up the necessary food and shelter, he didn't see any harm in making sure they were co-located with technology powerhouses in case they ever got around to doing more than merely surviving.

Which, from the smell of things as they began the trek through the marina toward Fisherman's Wharf, someone had already managed to do.

"Oh my god, it's real food," Sam groaned, taking a deeper breath as he convinced his tired feet to pick up the pace. He was almost used to the quiet from Tron now; just the scuff of the program's steps following his was enough reassurance that he did not bother to turn for a visual confirmation.

The light breeze smelled like fish, but that was hardly a surprise considering the wharfs' location. What _was_ surprising was the thick, salty scent of stock and other stewing materials which accompanied it, setting his stomach to rumbling even though they had just filled up on jerky and canned beans and the last of their apple supply an hour ago. They followed the trail all the way to the park lawns behind the old maritime museum when Sam rounded a corner - and ran right into something at hip height that bounced off to land in a ragged bundle at his feet.

" ... a compressed user?"

"A ... what?" Sam glanced distractedly at an equally bewildered Tron before he quickly crouched down. "Hey - hey there, fella, you okay?"

The boy, six or seven perhaps, stared up at them with wide green eyes and a gape big enough that Sam could see a missing lower incisor. Just as Sam was reaching toward him to help him back to his feet, though, the child scrambled up on his own, wiping messy brown hair away from his forehead as he skittered out of reach.

"Whoa there, buddy, we're not gonna hurt you - "

"No?"

"No," Sam echoed firmly, with the widest grin he could remember, both hands held up in a gesture of good will. "Sorry 'bout that, didn't see you coming. I'm Sam, and this is Tron. You got any folks around - "

Before Sam could even finish expressing his hope that there was some sort of organized adult effort - the child looked thin, but otherwise, taken care of - the boy had abruptly leaped back in to tug at his collar with surprising strength, nearly pulling him face-first into the concrete when his pack over-balanced him. "Help! Help us - !"

"Hey, wait, hold on - !" Sam flailed, catching himself on a hand and wincing at the shrill cries next to his ear. "We'd be happy to, what's the - "

"They're gonna steal our food! They'll beat up Mama and Gong Gong and steal our food - "

Before Sam could do more than extricate the small fists from his shirt and rebalance himself against the weight on his back, there was a decisive thump beside him and he looked over to see Tron's pack now sitting beside him on the ground.

"Where?" was all the program asked, his face suffused with a focus and awareness that Sam had not even noticed was missing until now.

The boy seemed struck momentarily by a similar awe before he abruptly whirled in a flap of a too-big jacket and started racing back the way he had come.

The boy and whomever he had been living with had been taking shelter in one of the hotels across from the wharfs, and the delectable smells of stew had been rising from a makeshift cooking assembly in the establishment's tiny courtyard. What also came from the small cul-de-sac, though, were the sounds of a struggle; a woman's fearful, stridently defiant cries and a man's gruff outrage, all nearly overcome by ribald catcalls and malicious laughter.

Tron leaped ahead as soon as their destination became obvious, outpacing their small guide in a single stride that made it seem as if the boy was standing still. Sam put on an extra burst of speed, but whatever Olympian physique the laser had translated Tron's stats as had the program out of sight and engaging the raiders before Sam could round the corner and catch his first glimpse of the scene in full.

It looked to be a relatively small gang; five men, three barely more than teenaged roughs. What appeared to be the ringleader was crouched over a wildly struggling Chinese woman, and even as Sam ran toward them, she managed to rake one free hand over the thug's face, causing him to rear back with a snarl - and tangle a hand in her hair before giving her head a firm crack against the ground.

"Xiao Yen!" an old man cried as she went limp, and he pushed ineffectually at his keeper - a sharp-faced man who shouted out a warning and kept a bruising grip on his charge, even as Sam ploughed into the ringleader with a roar and knocked them both to the ground.

The thug was older, with the scarred knuckles of a brawler, and probably massed a good ten to twenty pounds more than Sam did. But Sam had been on lean rations and the equivalent of a forced march for weeks now, and he was no stranger to trouble. He was also not above using surprise to his advantage as he got one good punch into the man's gut and then another across the jaw before he was kicked off.

"Pick on someone your own size," he spat.

"Still don't see any here, shrimp," the man growled breathlessly before charging in, head down like a bull.

Sam wasn't quite fast enough to dodge completely, but he managed to avoid the brunt of the man's weight as they were brought to the ground again. After that, it was a confused flurry of pseudo-wrestling moves as they each tried to gain the upper position, before there was a sudden _crack_ and the man went unexpectedly limp, nearly crushing the breath from Sam as dead-weight flopped across his middle. He blinked up past a stinking mass of oily hair to see the worried features of the old man - inexplicably free, now - who gave him a curt nod before disappearing from view. Groaning, Sam shoved the thug's weight off to check on the progress of Tron, who had initially been hemmed in by the youngest members of the gang.

Even without Rinzler's killer instincts, one youth was already lying unconscious at Tron's feet and the program was eyeing the remaining two calmly as they circled him. Though they were smart enough to realize that their best chances were to attack him in concert, inexperience caused one to hesitate just long enough that when they finally moved, the program had time to block one's punch, shift, and lash out with a foot, catching the other in the face with a straight side kick.

As the latter stumbled back, blood leaking between the fingers he had clamped to his nose, Tron swayed fluidly around a second punch and wrapped an arm around the extended limb with almost languid ease. Twisting in a maneuver too quick for Sam to follow, his second opponent's feet abruptly left the ground as the youth pinwheeled through the air, then landed with a solid-sounding _smack_ upon his back, the breath and wits knocked out of him.

Tron's last opponent wisely fled.

There was a wild crowing and the program tensed, half-whirling with an arm raised, before freezing as a familiar bundle abruptly latched itself to his side. He stared uncomfortably at the boy before awkwardly reaching around in an attempt to pat one small shoulder, in the same manner as he might have acknowledged a comrade-in-arms. "You're welcome ... ?" he said with no small amount of uncertainty amidst the boy's excited babblings over his recent performance.

Sam snorted in amusement, half-turning with the intent to check on the woman and old man, before he abruptly realized that there was a murmur of conversation beneath the child's high-pitched exuberance, coming from the hotel itself.

Two teen-aged girls and a frail-looking man lurked in the shadow of a pair of french doors, the former pair whispering excitedly to each other. The hum of voices was building, and Sam's eyes lifted, to find three heavy-set Hispanic women clustered at a window directly overhead, staring down with unapologetic fascination in their dark eyes. He stepped back, raking his gaze over the orderly rows of windows all across the hotel's three inner facades, and every dozen or so, he was certain he caught a glimpse of a face ... the twitch of a curtain ... a silhouette, hastily moving aside at his regard. And he felt his stomach begin to clench with a painful hope.

It was not just two or three individual transients squatting on the land. There were people _living_ here.

* * *

When Sam and Tron had left the arcade, it was dawn. Dust still hung suspended like a mist, the air eerily still in that peculiar way after mayhem has passed; morning light filtering through in bandings which Sam associated more with black and white photographs of ancient cathedrals than the broken crenellations of Seattle's Old City.

There had been a far off echo of an emergency vehicle wailing into the distance, like the lonely call of a dying species. They would hear sirens intermittently for two more days, before they fell forever silent.

Sam didn't know at first whether he was grateful for or resentful of Tron's presence. What few stragglers and survivors they had encountered were either too deep in shock for comfort - the one woman they had found in that state had wandered off while they were asleep, never to be seen again - or too skittish to even approach, and the security program's sane and steady companionship was a relief by comparison. Yet, at the same time, with Sam's entire world uppended head over tail, everything felt raw and uncertain, and the incessant stream of questions - half of which he had no idea how to answer - and the need to explain even the most basic of concepts sometimes wore on him.

But, even figuring for the shock of entering into the user world in such a precipitous fashion, there was an alien strain which occasionally pulled Tron's features into taut lines, that sometimes curved his shoulders and movements into a restless, Rinzler-like prowl even though Rinzler was safely locked away. It wasn't until the third day, when a cat knocked over some rubbish and he had whirled with a hand reflexively going to his back before he paused, looking stricken, that it occurred to Sam to wonder if programs could suffer PTSD.

"Was it like this?" he asked before his brain could catch up.

"Yes." Tron apparently needed no introduction to the topic, for which Sam was grateful. They had not had time to properly address the Rinzler divide before - quite honestly, he had dragged his feet on the subject after installing the voice keys two weeks ago - and he still didn't know just how direct a hand the alter ego had had in The Purge. "No. I ... don't know. Not in detail. But there are ... feelings? Sensations? Here." He had pressed a hand to his chest, heel digging into the bottom edge of his sternum, as if trying to physically crush the heart beneath into submission. "And there is much more left behind, in your world. Clu ... he had been very fastidious. About cleaning up, afterward."

Sam fell sick the next day. Thankfully, by then, Tron knew enough about basic user survival to keep them both just on this side of living until he recovered. It was then, as Sam was still squinting through gummy lashes and scrabbling for his first lucid thought in days, while a program knelt beside him with head bowed in desperate relief and breathing a prayer of thanks to gods which didn't exist, that he realized Tron was well and truly his responsibility.

He wondered if it was some sort of cosmic balance that gave into his charge someone with his godfather's face.

When they had first emerged, his phone had indicated there were new voicemail messages and several missed calls from Alan. Since cellular services were down, all he could do at the time was stare periodically at the bubbly status icon until the device's battery ran out.

Four days later, he left the dead mobile on his father's computer desk in the arcade basement, just before they began their journey south. He never did untangle whether it was grief or a sort of sick relief which followed the realization that he would never hear his godfather's last words to him.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a REALLY quick chapter as I was inspired and wrote most of it on the same night I posted Part 4, and for once, I've actually mapped out the major steps to the end instead of flying by the seat of my pants like I usually do, so I mostly know where I'm going. Mostly.
> 
> And sorry, I ended up lying about the plot thing. =( I had been intending to end the first part of this chapter later on in the storyline, but then Danny's talk happened, and I felt like it was a good place to stop and just let it have its moment. So, more key chars and events will be introduced next time instead. =)
> 
> (You know, there are so many stories/games out there where a protagonist is fighting some evil world-domainting or world-destroying plan, and somehow, they always manage to win through and stop the countdown. It occurred to me that this could very well be one of those stories where they failed. Poor protagonist. Poor world. Also, as I was describing the (totally implausible) characteristics of the bio-virus, it also occurred to me that it behaved an awful lot like a computer virus brought into the real world. *eyeshifts cough cough* A story for another time, perhaps.)

The woman's nickname was Xiao Yen, or "Little Swallow," though after she had recovered from the bump to her head, she had laughingly protested in accented English that she was not so little anymore.

"Everyone is little to me," Dr. Daniel "Danny" Chou, M.D. (retired) had smirked in perfect, American English. "Third generation Chinese," he had proclaimed at Sam's lifted brows, holding up three gnarled fingers. "I'm just as white-washed as you, boy."

The child's name was Eric, and in spite of his thoroughly western looks, seemed to understand Xiao Yen's staccatto Mandarin with the same ease as he pattered gently lisping English back at her and everyone else. (There had been another loose tooth which had promptly fallen out the day after Sam and Tron's arrival. It had been proudly presented to Tron in thanks for his services, and then Sam was forced to spend the next hour explaining tooth fairies, Santa Claus, and various other child-deluding customs before he gratefully took refuge in dinner being served.)

"We were all staying in this hotel when it happened," Danny confided. "We were the only survivors in it. He imprinted on her like a duck - they've been good for each other."

"Do you know what happened? You know, being a doctor and all," Sam waved his spoon vaguely to encompass all of Danny, from the scraggly salt-and-pepper hair bordering his bald dome to the cracked leather sandals on his feet.

"With the plague?" The old man had hummed solemnly, eyes closing as the sagging skin of his jowls drooped even further in a frown. "Well, people flying all over the country every day. Driving five, fifty, five hundred miles at a time. Our population shuffling around every few hours. If you had some infection that was real easy to pass on - maybe by just touching the same things, maybe just by breathing nearby - how far would that infection go? How quickly? What if no one knew they had it and it kept spreading for a week, an entire month ... until one day, there was a trigger, and it all activated, all at once?"

Another pause, this one more contemplative while Sam felt chills crawl down his spine - the scenario no less frightening, even after it had already come to pass - and then Danny shrugged phlegmatically. "All speculation at this point; the characteristics I just described didn't exist together in a single organism that also had a 98% fatality rate; at least, not in a wild type. I don't have a lab to isolate viruses or antibodies, and nobody's getting sick anymore. It's all over and done with."

"But, why were we the survivors?" Sam rolled his shoulders to try and relieve the itch between them. "There's no pattern. Young, old, where we were ... "

Danny shrugged again. "I could give you all sorts of scientific mumbo-jumbo on why that could be, but does it really matter? I wouldn't be able to prove any of it. We survived. And we should stay focused on staying surviving."

Danny had been the nucleus around which the other stragglers had collected, the rare doctor (even retired) in a world that had become much more uncertain. He happily provided them with his services in exchange for whatever they were willing to give up - labor, news from elsewhere, supplies - and then sent them on their way with a wave if they remained restless and footloose.

"You two going to move on?" he asked, bluntly curious.

"You kidding?" Sam said around a mouthful of soup-soaked bread. "I think this's the best thing I've tasted even before the world exploded."

"Xiao Yen will be glad to hear that. The Chinese have had centuries to perfect the art of creating meals from scraps," Danny cackled, eyes slitted until they were nearly lost in sagging wrinkles. "Your friend there looks like he's fitting in all right."

In the courtyard, Eric had caught up with Tron and was describing something with expansive gestures of one hand, the other propped on his hip in an awkward imitation of the program's more casual stance. Tron's brow was furrowed, listening to the boy as studiously as he would any adult - Sam had gotten as far as making the program understand that children were not "compressed users" but versions that were "still under development" and in potential need of the occasional "debugging," but wasn't sure how much further he should push the concept.

When Eric held up something he had dug from a pocket and demonstrated by putting it in his mouth, Sam had to quell the sudden urge to rush over and inspect it before Tron accepted an offering and did the same. After all, if the plague had not had an effect on Tron, surely a little dirt wouldn't kill the program?

He still couldn't help casting a surreptitious glance sideways to check if the doctor looked worried, though.

"But, seriously," Sam forced his attention back to his bowl when Danny appeared to be not at all concerned about sore throats or potential bubonic outbreaks, "we were originally just going to pass through on our way to Silicon Valley. I'm a ... well, computers were sort of my thing, so I thought - "

"Silicon Valley?" Sam's heart began to sink at Danny's grave tone, and the old man confirmed his fears with a small shake of his head. "A dirty bomb. Don't know if it was intended for San Francisco and someone managed to pull it off course, or it strayed on its own. Or maybe it was intended for San Jose all along, trying to cripple one of the nation's major technology centers. But nobody's going to be headed there for a long time. Not in your generation, anyway."

There was a frozen moment in which Sam tried to grasp the vaporization of America's computing capital, the home of the world's processing and internet revolutions. Arguably one of the birthplaces of what had put America at the top of the global food chain in his generation ... literally atomized. There would not even be rubble; just a gigantic, radioactive crater ... or would the edges be close enough to the bay and ocean that it would have flooded into a perfectly circular lake ...

All of through which Danny sat patiently until Sam finally shook himself out of his daze to roughly apologize, "It ... you think you've figured out the world's ended, you know? Things being ... well, like this, for weeks and weeks now. But sometimes ... it just hits you ... "

"It was a bit like this after 9/11, yes?" Danny hummed, pushing himself up creakily from the steps they had been squatting on and giving Sam's shoulder a companionable pat as he shuffled down. "It's this place. People living here, making friends, sharing food ... feels like normal life for a little while. Fools your brain. Then suddenly you turn around, and the towers aren't there, or you realize you can't just walk down to the convenience store for some milk and eggs, or you remember you hadta bury your spouse and neighbors ... it's all right. We all understand, here."

Sam swallowed thickly and looked down at the remnants of his stew as Danny called out a hello to an incoming party. And even though his stomach was now clenched into a painful knot, he remembered where he was and what the world had become, and forced himself to finish every last drop before he stood to follow the doctor.

* * *

"When I enlisted your help - "

"Release Rinzler. We made it, Tron."

" - I was not quite envisioning - "

"Release Rinzler. We made it, Tron."

" - quite ... Quorra, is this - "

"Release Rinzler. We made it, Tron."

" - really necess - Quorra, can you wait just a - "

"Release Rinzler. We made it, Tron."

" - just _hold on_ \- "

"Relea - "

The remainder of the command was lost to a smothered mumble as Tron slid a hand behind Quorra's head and clapped the other over her mouth, the security program scowling into the wide-eyed innocence that stared right back at him over his fingers. "Enough, Quorra, I am not a WAV program with a pause command that you can continuously mash without consequences. Will you desist?"

Sam stared at the two programs from where he still stood frozen in mid-stride by the bizarre game he had wandered in on, until Tron huffed and dropped his hands with a defeated, "I should have known better than to ask."

"Uhm ... hi, guys. What's going on?" Sam finally ventured, and Quorra clasped her hands primly behind her back as she pinned one of those sweet, sweet smiles he was just beginning to learn to distrust on him.

"Oh, Tron asked me to help him - "

" - not abuse him," the security program grumbled.

" - run some experiments on how much he retains between triggers," the ISO finished brightly, not batting an eye. "He does seem to retain volatile memory better when the consecutive switches are rapid."

"I ... see. And how exactly did that become ... " He waved vaguely between them. " ... this."

"I thought he might find it useful to know how rapidly he can switch between personas," Quorra proposed.

"Eight times?" Tron groused.

"Every experiment needs to have its results validated and confirmed," she quoted.

"I think that had been firmly established by the second or third - "

"Release Rinzler. We made it, Tron."

" - iteration - _Sam!_ " Tron virtually squawked with a betrayed expression.

Sam had to _strain_ at withholding his grin as he stated solemnly, "An experiment has to be repeatable, and part of validation requires that it be repeated by separate parties." At Tron's aggrieved look, however, he couldn't hold it back anymore and bent over with a howl, leaning against a similarly discombobulated Quorra before he mustered as much sincerity through his amusement as he could and offered, "Well, do you want me to key the triggers to just me, like Rinzler's command structure?"

Tron somehow managed to look even more pained before he grudgingly admitted, "No, the reasoning was sound. It is best if anyone nearby could make the switch in case something went ... wrong."

"Alrighty ... so. Should I let you get back to it, then?" Sam waved between the security program and ISO as he straightened with a last wheezing inhale.

Looking slightly hunted, Tron quickly asserted, "I need to be in Sector Delta-One in ten microcycles for a diagnostic run, so I should be going. I will find you later." Neither of them had time to so much as draw another breath for a goodbye before his lightcycle was rez'ed and humming.

As Tron sped off in a graceful curve, Quorra asked, "Will he be all right?"

Sam's good mood ebbed as rapidly as the afterimages of the cycle's lights. "I don't know," he admitted with a frustrated sigh, unable to even pretend his usual bravado. "I mean ... Dad and Clu have been developing this stuff for longer than I've been alive, and I've had, what, two months to wrap my head around it all? And, oh, suddenly I'm also supposed to play psychiatrist-slash-cyberworld-surgeon to an AI warrior hero who also happens to have been around for longer than I've been alive. Longer than even the _grid_."

Quorra took his hand and gave it a squeeze. "Don't worry. Tron is a strong program."

"Yeah, well, it's not his character I'm worried about."

"And we're not worried about yours either," Quorra riposted with frightening insight for a computer program, self-evolved or not. She looked up at him, and Sam had to swallow in the face of her utter conviction. "We trust you, Sam Flynn. You'll make everything right again."


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh. My. God. This chapter seriously kicked my butt. And Winzler kicked me until I kicked this chapter out. So thank her and all the other folk who kept flinging inspiring smileys at me.
> 
> Boy, this has been a tough month for the fic and in RL! But I feel a whole lot of satisfied with finally getting it out, and while things don't look like they're gonna be that much smoother afterwards, hopefully I won't hit as big a writer's block as before. :)

Alec was a tall man, brown hair just beginning to gray at the temples, and carried himself like someone who was used to building things with his own hands. The two who followed him into the courtyard needed little more than a nod from him before they were quick to meet the hotel residents halfway. They all carried packs with them - filled with scavenged supplies from their tours - and contents were rapidly being redistributed as Sam shuffled up behind Danny.

" - Sanders' team probably won't be back 'till dusk, though I told them not to stay out that long if they could help it. Nelson's men have been pretty active lately and - who's that?"

"Hm - ?" Danny turned, then motioned Sam over when he hovered just outside of polite conversational range. "Speaking of that gang ... Sam, meet Alec. Alec, Sam and his friend there - Tron, you said? - helped chase off some of those hooligans just this afternoon - "

"Chase off?" Alec echoed, face tight with consternation before he leveled a glare upon Sam that had him stepping back in surprise, hands up and brows arched.

"Hey, you're welcome, buddy," he couldn't resist griping, at first more bewildered than truly antagonized. Even before Alec turned to Danny with an even deeper scowl, though, he could tell that the conversation was on its way down a steep slope.

"Why did they need to be 'chased off' in the first place?" Alec growled, and even if the doctor didn't look particularly perturbed by the open confrontation, Sam could feel his hackles rise just on principle.

"Hey man, what's the big deal - "

"What's going on?" Tron walked over with that uncanny sense he had for trouble, and after a mere glance to take in their tense stances, the security program squared his own shoulders, hands loose at his sides.

"Nothing - Tron, why don't you take Eric inside and - " Danny began with a placating gesture before the boy, bouncing along in Tron's wake, piped out an innocent, "Hi, Alec!" and promptly launched into an excited and exquisitely detailed description of the elephant lurking in the corner.

" - and then Tron _zoomed in_ and did something I couldn't even _see_ and _bam_ the guy went right down and -"

"Ah, thank you, Eric, you make a mighty fine story-teller," the doctor hummed as he slid an arm nonchalantly around the boy's shoulders and tucked him close, conveniently muffling the boy's babbling against his jacket and sleeve.

"Danny," Alec said with a slow, deliberate tone into the pause. "Why were Nelson's men here?"

Danny shrugged, and he might have missed his calling as an actor for all the bland innocence he projected. "Oh, you know, the usual - supplies, raiding, smelled the food, came circling like the pack of hyenas that they are ... "

"So why were these jokers chasing them off?" Alec motioned between Tron and Sam, and even before Sam could do more than bristle, the man was barrelling on, "I _told_ you to just stay out of sight and let them take what they wanted - "

Sam made a face. "What? Why would you do that?"

"I know, I know - " Danny huffed, equanimity finally slipping as he made small motions for Sam to back down.

"Because then they leave after they get what they wanted and nobody gets hurt! We don't need some newcomers waltzing in and making us all a big fat target - " Alec rounded on him.

Fortunately - or unfortunately - Sam had more than enough experience standing up to people attempting to loom over him, literally or metaphorically. "Hey, at least I know you don't let bullies walk all over you or they just keep coming back!" he retorted.

Alec flushed, and Sam was just beginning to rock forward when Eric managed to eel out of the doctor's grip and suddenly exploded, _"They were gonna steal Ma's food!"_

Sam was not the only one who jumped. The boy was all but vibrating with a fury that was disquieting to see in someone so small. "They were gonna steal it, she spent _all morning_ making it, and it's not _fair_ \- !"

Alec's jaw tightened, eyes narrowing. "This isn't about _fairness_ but about _survival_ \- "

Predictably, the five-year-old didn't give a fig about semantics. " - no! No, I don't wanna hide anymore, I don't wanna see Ma cry, and _Tron_ fought them off so we don't need _you_ anymore!" he concluded bewilderingly before whirling about and fleeing for the hotel's interior.

"Eric!" Danny reached out instinctively before making a sound as if to chastise himself. When Alec moved to follow, the doctor poked the man in the shoulder with a bony finger. "Never mind," he sighed in frustration, "he's in one of those moods again."

"Moods," Sam deadpanned, still struggling to navigate all the strange undercurrents of the last five minutes. As far as he could tell,  _Eric's_ moods were the least of their problems here.

"The boy's had his whole world turned inside-out just a few months ago," the doctor grunted. "He's had the occasional outbursts like that, and I don't blame him. After he calms a bit, I'll try talking to him. It happened earlier ... he ran out yelling before anyone knew what was happening, and of course, Xiao Yen panicked and ran out after him. Pretty soon, everything was a mess. We were lucky to have Sam and Tron happen by when they did."

"Lucky?" Alec's attention refocused upon them, and Sam could feel his chin lifting automatically in a stubborn tilt. Maybe as the de facto guests, he should be making a bigger effort to help smooth things over, but he had never had the best impulse control in the first place, and it was even harder to play nice after so many weeks where social graces had taken a backseat. "Just where are you from, anyway?"

"From outside SF," Sam bit out. There was a weird moment in which he recalled playing similar games witih the police, and had to blink hard to dispel the ghosts. "Look, man, I don't know what your problem is, but it's not like we were exactly given instructions - what?" he turned irritably at a touch upon his arm, but then straightened at Tron's intent look, angled toward the street, head tilted as if searching for something.

 _"Danny! Danny!"_

Even with that brief warning, Sam jumped at the call, adrenaline spiking at the clear panic beneath the breathless exhaustion. "Sanders?" Alec's brow knit as he strode quickly for the courtyard entrance and the figure trotting up. "Sanders! What's wrong, you weren't supposed to be back until - "

The man stumbled up to them, accepting the brace of Alec's arm as he leaned over, trying to catch his breath. "Alec! Thank god you're back already ... we were in the warehouses - "

Alec blinked, bit off a curse, and demanded, "What's with people doing _exactly_ the opposite of what I say - what happened?"

"There was a collapse ... "

Sam turned when there was a motion next to him, and raised a silent brow of inquiry when he noticed the heavy, expectant look Tron had leveled upon him. As the newcomer began to sketch details of how a portion of the building they had been scavenging in collapsed, trapping two people inside, he battled briefly with his urge to avoid another patented "non-interference" diatribe before girding himself and stepping forward. "Uhm, hey, look, I don't know all the details, but what exactly do you need to get them out? Maybe we can help."

Alec looked predictably put-out by the interruption, but had the grace to keep it to a single glare before giving Sanders a jerky nod. The man glanced between them uncertainly, then shrugged. "Heavy haulers, I guess? Like construction machines - "

Sam's brows rose. "There must be hundreds of those scattered around. Any city's always got construction projects going on, and we could probably figure out the controls - "

"There's nothing nearby, and no time to get something there," the man quickly shook his head. "Maria says Justin's pretty bad off, and the whole area's a mess after the bombing. It'd take hours to find a path to navigate it to the warehouse - "

"Then, I guess we'll just have to lift a truck or SUV that's already in the area ... " Sam suggested, before staring at the expressions around him. "What?"

Alec asked with a murky mix of skepticism and hope, "You know how to jack a car?"

"Uhm ... " There was a queer moment in which Sam fought with an automatic denial, before logic caught up and reminded him that there were hardly any police or laws left to be wary of. "Uh, yeah, I do."

"Good," Alec said decisively, grasping Sam's shoulder and propelling him ahead toward the courtyard's entrance. "You, Tron - you come along too. We'll need every able-bodied person we can get. Sanders, go see what sorts of shovels and ropes we might have here already - chains'll be too heavy for us to haul around by hand until we get a vehicle, but I know a site where we might be able to raid for that sort of stuff near the warehouse ... "

As people scattered, even Danny shuffling off with some mumbled excuse about prepping his medical supplies, Sam peered sideways at a stoic-looking Tron. "So, what was that about?"

Tron's brows rose. "What was what about?"

"You deciding to wake up when there are damsels in distress."

The program's forehead wrinkled in doubt. "But there are men as well as women trapped, and of course, if there is aid required - "

Sam waved away the program's confusion with a long-suffering sigh, the incongruous wish of having a working DVD player and _The Princess Bride_ on hand suddenly popping into his mind before a distinctly lilting, "Sam! Tron!" had them both turning.

Xiao Yen was walking hurriedly up to them, a sullen-looking Eric bundled in her arms. "Oh, good, you are still here! Eric wants to say apology."

"Apology? For what?" Sam asked with a glance toward the boy, who looked like he wanted to say nothing of the sort and somehow managed to curl into an even smaller bundle of glower.

Xiao Yen uttered a soft stream of scolding Chinese that had the boy squirming before she said firmly, "It is impolite. He should not yell at you and run away - it is not respectful."

Sam couldn't help a bit of a squirm himself at all the mention of politesse and respect. "Oh, uh, that's all right, I mean, boys will be boys - " He paused at the look abruptly leveled on him, distantly wondered how such a petite woman could suddenly look so scary, and swallowed. "Right, I'm a role model, gotcha. Uh, yeah, I'm ready for that apology, uhm, whenever you are, I guess."

Eric mumbled something, mostly toward his foster mother's shoulder, before a light jog of her hip had him speaking up more distinctly, "'m sorry I yelled!"

"And ... ?" Xiao Yen guided, her tone growing coaxing.

"An' ... an' I won't do it anymore, an' I'll listen to the adults when they've got something to say an'-here-this's-for-you - " he ended in a rush as he thrust a wad of unrecognizable fabric that had been sandwiched between them toward Sam.

Sam bemusedly accepted the thing, and after a bit of fumbling, was left staring at a plaid, fleece-lined bomber hat, complete with earflaps. It took a moment before he managed to unglue his tongue enough to prompt, "What ... ?"

"I said he should give something to you. Because giving gift make everyone feel better, and it will be cold soon, so ... "

Sam had never really taken to the "words of wisdom" that people liked to stick in inspirational calendars. After all, if it really was that easy, the world would have been in much better shape than it was. But maybe it was different when it came from a mother-figure, because as Eric unfurled to hand Tron his share of the gift-giving, the boy really did look less curmudgeony, and even waited with a hopeful air as the program sorted out his item.

Or, rather, items. It turned out Tron had received a faded black baseball cap with the Sinclair rainbow logo embroidered on it and a hideously bright, green and purple banded scarf.

"He got two things 'cause his hat don't cover his ears," Eric anxiously explained, clapping his hands over his own ears in illustration.

"No, no, that's all right ... " Sam protested weakly, glancing between the smiling faces of Eric and Xiao Yen and the politely confused one of Tron's, then tugged his new hat over his head with a sigh, trying not to look as if he wished he could shrink his head down between his shoulders. "Like this, Tron, and the scarf you just kinda wrap around your neck - "

"It could become a choking hazard - "

"It's to keep you  _warm_ ," Sam overrode, bunching the fabric around the program's neck, "and we are being _polite_. Uhm, shouldn't he really be giving these to Alec there?" he mumbled vaguely in Xiao Yen's direction. "I mean, he was really yelling at the other guy, not us ... "

"Little steps," the woman responded at the same volume with an unsettling air of perspicacity. "We go to Alec after you are back. You are his favorite, so it is easier to give to you first."

Feeling more manipulated than ever, Sam could only give in with a duck of his head and a resigned, "Oh."

San Francisco varied widely between immaculate and utter devestation. It was clear that the city had been a major target, considering the landmarks missing from its skyline and the occasional destruction they passed, but it had not been flattened completely. While rolling past one of its numerous neighborhood parks, his elbow hanging out the window of a maintenance vehicle with a truck-bed filled with equipment and people, Sam could almost believe that they were simply on a pleasant, afternoon outting. A picnic. A weekend visit.

And then there was stuff like the giant concrete pylon collapsed across the street. He called over his shoulder in warning before he turned the wheel to roll over a curb, squeaking past the obstruction.

It wasn't too much longer before they made it to the warehouse in question. It was easy to see why Alec had wanted to keep people away from the district in spite of the draw of supplies; several were visibly leaning, and just two blocks over there was only empty air where the buildings had been flattened altogether. The one at which Sam pulled up to was well on its way to joining its neighbors; half of it had already slumped over, powdered mortar still lingering as a soft gray haze over the site.

Sam couldn't help thinking that the frozen cascades of crumbled brick looked like spilled voxels.

A woman scrambled toward them from where she had been perched within the ruins, and Alec was out of the cab before Sam had pulled to a complete stop. Fresh tears were cutting through the tracks left in the dust smudged on her cheeks, and Alec had to spend the first few breaths trying to calm her down to intelligibility. Finally, as they began to get a steady stream of Spanish going between them, Sam and the others began unloading the truck.

"Justin's pinned beneath something here, near the front," Alec translated when the woman stumbled off through the debris to retake her original post, presumably near the unlucky victim. "It'll be tricky to move things without everything falling down, but I think we can manage it with the truck's help. Jill, though, is stuck on the second floor - it's half gone, and she's backed into the only corner left, and I don't want to move things until I know we're not going to bring everything else down too. Look around and get a feel for the layout, but _don't_ touch _anything_ till I give the go ahead. Got it?" He pinned each of them with a look from beneath his brow, making sure he received a direct acknowledgment from them all before he stalked off, shoulders bunched with tension.

Sam picked his way further into the cracked-open shell of the warehouse, and Tron caught up with him just as he stepped beneath the shadow of the ceiling's remnants. The setting sun scattered through clouds of glittering motes, occasionally swirling like fireflies on some invisible eddy in the air currents. He occasionally caught Tron brushing his arm through them, then turning his hand over to check the palm for hitchhikers. Illogically, the large, echoing space seemed all the more cavernous now that the stray noise from the other rescuers bounced within; they all stepped carefully, as much due to the quixotic air as from caution alone.

There used to be an L-shaped mezzanine along the left and back walls, but now the entire rear was gone, taking part of the side deck with it. All that remained was about a fifteen by thirty foot section of splintered beams and planks before a walled-off office space. Pressed against the partition was a slim, white-lipped woman, eyeing the mezzanine's edge with wild eyes. He waved, trying to project a reassuring expression, and received a stiff, tentative wave back.

"I can reach her," Tron murmured before Sam could even formulate the question.

Sam took a breath, reflexive skepticism on the tip of his tongue as he eyed the gap between floors and the all too obvious lack of a staircase. But then he realized just who exactly was making the claim, and released the air in a loud huff. "So, uh, just how close are your stats in the user world compared to the grid?" he mumbled out of the side of his mouth as he heard footsteps scuffing closer.

"Within the ninety-fifth percentile," Tron responded at the same volume. So, close enough that it didn't make much of a difference.

"Jill? How're you doing?" Alec's voice floated over there shoulders as the man stopped behind them.

"Help me ... please ... " the woman stuttered, voice squeaking with barely controled panic. She looked like the only thing keeping her from a complete breakdown was the fear that it might send her plummeting to the floor.

"It's all right, honey, we'll have you down soon! Just sit tight, all right? Don't move!" Alec responded with gruff assurance as he motioned for them to follow him.

Wincing, Sam asked, "What's the plan?"

"We need to get Justin out ASAP," Alec sighed, grinding the heel of a palm over an eye, "he's bleeding and isn't responding anymore. I think we can manage it in one move without having the rest of the debris falling in and crushing him, but I'm worried about taking out that wall and mezzanine at the same time."

Sam tried to trace the possible path of collapse, and found it difficult to pick out the primary issues in the jumble of wood, steel joints, and bricks. "You sure - ?" he began, before the man interrupted with a hint of his original testiness, "I was a construction foreman. I know how weight falls."

Sam bit his tongue against a reflexive retort at the tone alone, but before he could more than consider what constituted a more acceptable response, Tron inserted smoothly, "So you need to move the woman before the beam - ?"

"There's no 'before', we're moving the beam now if we don't want to lose Justin," Alec concluded grimly, and indeed, the other two men that had come with them were already wrapping chains and rope around a protruding piece. "But if we can get to her at the same time - "

"I can do it."

Alec paused, eyeing Tron warily. Sounding more surprised by the program's rapid assertion than by the claim itself, he asked, "Yeah? What do you need?"

"Nothing," Tron answered with blithe confidence.

Sam could almost see the angry flush starting at the man's collar. "Uh, what he means," he interjected hastily, "is that he's got a lotta experience solo climbing and free-running. He can probably make do with whatever's available."

"Yeah? Well, just remember that a woman's life is on the line, so if you need rope? You better damned well tell me you need the rope instead of trying to play the hot jock, got it?" Alec growled.

Tron straightened his back even more at the open antagonism, putting on his best-security-program-on-the-grid face. "Of course. I don't even know how to play that game."

Sam fought the urge to slap a hand over his face and hastily butted in. "Look, we got the memo, all right? Just give us five minutes and we'll have her down," he concluded without waiting for further responses, quickly tugging Tron away.

"Sam, why are you - "

"All right, spill," Sam overrode in a terse whisper as they hustled back to the mezzanine's remains. "Just how're you gonna do it?"

Tron sighed, as if Sam had scrambled his memory pointers intentionally in order to force him to repeat the obvious. "I'm going to climb."

"Climb what?" Sam hissed incredulously, staring at the crumbled brick facade of the wall; the two foot thick, weathered wood column which supported the near corner of the deck; then the mezzanine itself, which looked like it hovered twenty-plus feet overhead. Whatever the warehouse had been used for, it was obvious that it had been built primarily as a storage space rather than a factory, and had the overhead clearance to hold entire stacks of shipping containers if necessary.

Tron gave Sam a gently exasperated look before he bent down to finger some of the shattered bits of brick strewn about the floor. Satisfied by their texture, he scuffed one sneaker's sole at the floor, testing its grip, before he crouched, gaze focused eerily at mid-space ... and launched himself straight for the wall.

Sam sucked in a sharp breath when Tron made a springing leap that nearly took him halfway up in the first stretch alone, struck out with a foot, and in a two-point rebound between wall and support beam, finally snagged a slender, gritty pipe so slim that Sam hadn't even registered it on his initial inspection. Most likely an electrical conduit, it seemed barely wide enough for Tron's fingertips - and most certainly did not have the fastenings necessary to support the program's full weight when it was brought to bear.

"Tron - !" Sam choked out when the anchoring brackets rattled ominously in the old brick, the entire pipe sagging noticeably.

The program didn't bother wasting breath on a response. The conduit had apparently been intended only as a temporary reprieve anyway, as he braced a foot against the wall and heaved himself upwards, jamming the fingertips of his other hand into an invisible crack overhead. Releasing the pipe just as it began to pull away altogether, he snapped his entire body upwards like a fish leaping from water - and managed to catch one hand upon the edge of the mezzanine with a grunt, drawing a surprised squeak from the stranded woman when his fingers slapped unexpectedly on the wood.

"Christ, you call that _climbing_?" Sam released a noisy breath, both hands clapped atop his bomber's hat incredulously as the program levered himself up onto the deck itself. Tron had barely gotten his feet under him before the woman was flinging both arms around him, openly sobbing; her fear of the edge temporarily overcome by the hope for a savior.

Sam smirked at the bemused and half-pleading look the program flung him. "I _knew_ you were angling for the chick - " he began before he was interrupted by the distant rumble of the truck's engine turning over. Humor evaporating, he cast a quick glance toward the other party in a vain attempt to gauge their progress before reminding tensely, "They're about ready to start. How're you going to get her down?"

Tron nodded, expression all business once more, and eyed their precarious little island. "I think we'll need that rope after all - " he began when there was a sudden, ominous creak, and the two visibly lurched, dust sifting down between the boards.

Sam's throat seized closed as he stared. The woman's sobs had cut off with a hiccup, all of their eyes wide and breaths held as they waited. "Maybe ... you can just lower her over the side, and I'll try and help her down ... " he proposed in his loudest whisper, as if the vibrations from his voice alone could possibly topple the fragile structure. In hindsight, Tron's energetic approach to reaching the mezzanine might not have been the best one to take.

Tron nodded mutely, and began to try and shuffle Jill and himself over to the edge. The woman whimpered, visibly dragging her heels, and the security program murmured quiet reassurances as he continued coaxing her closer.

"It's all right, I'm right here, just a little more - " Sam tried to chivvy her along too as he positioned himself beneath them. But then he heard the truck's engine rev up, and his heart leaped up into his throat as he called over his shoulder, "Hold on, guys, just give us a minute here!" before looking up once more with hands reaching, half-babbling, "Tron, just give her over, I don't think it's gonna hold - "

Maybe it wasn't the best thing to say; the woman's unintelligible hysterics ratched up another notch, and Tron was beginning to look half-strangled from her grip. "Hey, we're ready!" Alec called from where he had positioned himself between the two rescue efforts. "How much longer are you going to - "

The last supporting post splintered near its base. One floorboard popped loose, forcing Sam to jump back as it clattered down, and the woman shrieked as the mezzanine groaned and shifted.

"Tron!" Sam shouted desperately. "Do it now - !"

Alec cursed, and the man's voice faded as he ran toward the others. "Go, go! It's coming down, pull it, pull it ... !"

Tron's stance slipped. Not due to the steady tilt of the deck, but because of his crazed burden, the woman's feet churning in a hysterical effort to pull back from the disintegrating edge even as the program was trying to bring them forward. His face a mask of frustration and concentration, he was trying to shift her to a less compromising hold so that he could give them _some_ chance of surviving this, but for a single, pristine moment, Sam could all but _see_ what will happen.

The woman will drag Tron down. He will not risk her safety. This was the sole purpose of his existence, and he will recalculate the possibilities again and again and again, even as their choices were being pared down with every heartbeat by the woman's own actions. He will keep searching for that one, ideal solution, until all solutions were out of reach, and in a moment of desperation as black as when he first realized his father was never coming home again, Sam screamed, _"Release Rinzler!"_

The woman choked and slumped, abruptly silent. Rinzler swept one arm around and heaved ... and her limp body was suddenly sailing through the air, loose-limbed and weirdly graceful.

Sam stumbled back, arms raised reflexively, still too numb yet to parse what had happened, and even the impact of the body which sent him sprawling only served to knock the air from his lungs rather than the wits back into his head.

The mezzanine collapsed. Rinzler ran the length of the last plank even as it sank, pushing off toward the office door, and planted a foot improbably upon the knob. Just before the office section fell too, he used that single bracing point as a launchpad and sprang - body twisting in a dizzying display that Sam had previously witnessed only in Olympic news coverage - clearing the imploding jungle of shattered wood and crushed brick in an astonishing, impossible arc.

Rinzler landed hard enough that the roll intended to help spread the impact left him skidding on knees and elbows. Sam found his breath only long enough to lose it again to hacking coughs, the area once more a gray haze from the latest upset. As Rinzler pushed himself to his feet, Sam dazedly rolled the woman off of him, and a different concern began curdling in his stomach as he checked her over with shaking hands.

It was only when he found her still breathing that he realized it had been dread. He had not considered thoroughly at the time what he might have been exchanging for his friend's life ... and dared not face now whether he would have found that exchange acceptable. "Tr - Rinzler, are you all right?" he asked hoarsely, looking up as he sensed the program walking stiffly over.

Rinzler was visibly favoring his right leg, and there was a sharper hunch to his shoulders than usual. But in the program's current state, Sam trusted that he would receive an unbiased report, and slowly relaxed when Rinzler tilted his head consideringly before giving a short nod; he was still functional.

"God ... " Sam drew a shaky breath in an attempt to steady himself before scooping up the woman. Meeting Rinzler's empty gaze, he said, "We made it, Tron."

Tron blinked, then shook himself, casting a blank look around as if trying to brush off sleep. Sam frowned, wondering if he had to worry if the program had managed to take a glancing blow to the head as well on the way down, when a voice from behind abruptly asked, "What was that?"

Sam's grip slipped and he nearly dropped the woman in the rush of adrenaline. "What - " he gasped, head jerking around to find Alec standing just a few feet away, staring at them. Mouth working uselessly for a moment, his brain only found an appropriate distraction when there came a slight shift and moan from his burden. "Oh, yeah, I think she got knocked out on the way down, must've hit her head or something, should get her back so Danny can take a look and do his doctor thing - " he blurted, the words all but stumbling over themselves as he made to push past.

"Tron." Sam stumbled to a halt at the upheld hand, and for once, there was something other than irritation or tension on the man's face. It was hard to pin down, exactly, what Alec was feeling - hell, the man himself was having a bit of a struggle over it if his grimace was any indication. "That was ... I'd never seen anything like it," he finished roughly, extending a small, dark bundle to the program.

Still looking disoriented, Tron accepted the item with a distant air, straightening it out into the Sinclair cap - lost during his epic leap from the mezzanine, now nearly gray from dust. " ... thank you," he managed rustily, staring at it a moment before he shook himself one more time and finally set it back on his head.

Alec frowned pensively, hesitated, then nodded without saying anything further. Stepping back, he reached for the stirring Jill, and Sam let the man take her, suddenly aware of the various bruises and strains he had acquired from when he had been used as a human cushion. "God, I hope he didn't see you knocking her out - " he mumbled when Alec was out of earshot, rubbing a hand over his face and wincing at the grit that fell into his eyes.

"Didn't see me do _what_?"

Sam hesitated at the demand, glancing toward the program. Tron had never before inquired as to what had happened while his alter ego was in charge, but it was probably only natural, considering the unusual circumstances - they had not been in direct danger from others, and Sam had not inquired this time before flipping the switch. "You - I think you knocked her out. She was totally hanging all over you and the whole thing was coming down, so - "

"And then I managed to jump with her?" Tron was frowning deeply now, staring at the ruin that used to be the mezzanine. After a handful of months, even the program had a pretty good grasp now of real world physics and was no doubt realizing that the numbers weren't adding up.

"Uhm, no. You, uh, you kinda threw her at me," Sam admitted with a rub of his neck, wincing at a kink. "Think it gave me wiplash. But c'mon, let's get back to the truck, it looks like they're just about done settling the two in the back. I wanna take a look at your knee and ankle - "

But an unexpectedly harsh hold closed around his elbow when he would have passed, and Tron hissed, "Why did you do that?"

"Hey, ow - watch that grip, man," Sam groused, more out of surprise than true ire. "What do you mean why did I do that? The whole place was coming apart on you!"

"I could have worked it out! I've taken higher drops - "

" _Maybe_ , and not with a hundred plus pounds of dead weight hanging off of you and a floor full of shrapnel!" Sam snapped back, temper pricked. "I wasn't gonna let you get buried if having Rinzler's monkey-reflexes would give you that extra edge - "

"I would have made it even without you calling for _him_ \- "

"Well excuse me if I didn't want to take the chance, all right?!" Sam spat, resolutely trying _not_ to think about that black moment when he thought Tron might have been lost. "There wasn't a whole lotta time to debate the issue, if you hadn't noticed. I made a command decision, and you're still here to argue with me, so I guess it went all right!"

Tron's expression went rigid, and then he said, low and fierce, "You said I would get to make my own choices now. This was _not_ my choice!"

Sam flushed at the sting of the accusation. What the hell was he supposed to have done? Just stood by and watched them both be crushed by the woman's hysterics? But before he could manage anything coherent, the program was already limping away toward the still-idling truck.

Sam strained air through his teeth as he tried to get a hold of his frustration, conveniently taking the time to put a good ten feet between himself and Tron before stomping after him. With only a tenuous grasp of his anger as he slipped into the driver's seat, he gritted his jaw as Tron fiddled with the radio controls - expression mutinous - and filled the cab with a symphony of white noise and static before he slapped at the program's hand. "Will you cut it out? I told you before, that's not gonna do anyth - "

 _" - a song, you're the piano man ... sing us a song tonight - "_

Sam froze. Even Tron stilled, sensing something momentous, though he still radiated discontent.

 _" - in the mood for a melody ...  
And you've got us feelin' - "_

It was Billy Joel. Playing on a radio station. A working radio station, which meant a working radio tower, which meant ...

" ... a lot of working electricity," Sam breathed.

* * *

The clean room was perfectly cubed, forty-feet by forty-feet by forty-feet. Sam resisted the urge to check it one last time - really, there was nothing _to_ check, and the motion would only betray his nervousness. Other than a fine gridwork of lines set every two feet and the slightly paler shades of walls and ceiling, the chamber was completely featureless ... and would remain so as long as everything went well.

At the corners of his eyes, Quorra was a maddeningly composed presence. His pride wouldn't let him ask if she was really that confident in his programming abilities, or if she was just really that confident, so instead, he focused upon the last occupant of the room and asked, "Ready?"

There was a noticeable hesitation before Tron nodded. "Ready."

Sam eyed his godfather's doppelganger. He didn't think he had ever seen one look _tired_ before, but there seemed to be a distinct lethargy haunting the program's expression and movements - a direct result of artificially throttled resources. It had been Tron's own suggestion that Sam place restrictions on him for the duration of the test, and as weird and disturbing as it was to imagine that he was essentially limiting Tron's brain power, he could think of no good reason at the time to not take such a precaution.

"Alrighty then," Sam exhaled, running out of excuses to delay further. Licking his lips, he took a deep breath and stated as confidently as he could, "Release Rinzler."

The transition was as easy and smooth as flipping a switch. In the space of a heartbeat, all the minimal points of light flicked from a cool, reassuring blue to a deep, baleful orange. All the little tics of expression and personality - of _life_ \- vanished. Perfectly still, in the way that only machines - virtual or mechanical - can accomplish, he looked like nothing more than a wax statue; unmoving, emotionless.

Tron hadn't even blinked.

Sam released a pent up breath. "Rinzler?" he called, and rather than reassured, felt virtual goosebumps march up his arms when the head inclined subtly toward him. "Well. All right, then. I ... guess it worked."

Quorra tilted her head, gaze still fixed upon the statue of Tron, expression as disturbingly smooth in its own way as the counterpart she was regarding. "So this is all of Rinzler ... without Tron?"

"I guess - " Sam began, before scraping a hand through his hair with a grimace. "No, I mean - yes, Rinzler's pretty much completely segregated now. There're still some hooks into base classes and functions in order to _run_ him, but everything he needs to be autonomous are just copies I made of the original for testing. Honestly, he's little more than Tron's basic security skills and privileges, a very short priorities list, and a command-run module slapped on top."

"Why do we need to have Rinzler running at all?" Quorra questioned dubiously.

Something which Sam had wrestled with himself. "There're still some things in there I don't understand," he admitted grudgingly, "and I'm pretty much messing with someone's personality here. Dad made it look all easy, flicking code around with a snap of his fingers, but he's had, like, a thousand cycles or whatever to work it out. I wanna make sure I'm not throwing out Tron's humor or something - that thing's so small already it'd be easy to chuck accidentally."

Quorra snickered and Sam felt a little better, until the ISO glanced around and then asked, "Do you hear that?"

Sam looked around too, wondering if this was the beginning of a joke. With more downtime now, he was beginning to learn that she had a distinctly off-beat wit that had not been helped by exposure to his father. "Hear what?" he prompted slowly.

"Exactly. There's no sound."

It took him a second longer, but then he realized what she was getting at - the distinctive purr-growl that had marked all their encounters with Tron's alter-ego was missing. It was as unnervingly quiet inside the room as it had been from the beginning.

Sam's brow wrinkled. "Do you think it was from the - "

She didn't bother waiting for him to finish. All of his thoughts scattered wide when Quorra lunged with a hair-raising warcy, and he flinched back out of pure reflex when the blue-white trail of her disc whipped past his head with what felt like mere centimeters to spare.

" _Jesus christ -_ " As he stumbled for balance, there was a screeching clash of disc weapons that had him reaching reflexively for his own before he realized with a cold rush what was happening.

Rinzler was defending himself. He was _fighting back_ in spite of the processing limitations, and Sam didn't think Quorra was pulling her punches - at least, not by much. Sam jarred one knee painfully as he rushed to slap his hand to the floor, and he may not have had the same panache as his father yet, but it got the job done all the same.

It took only a twist of thoughts for a pulse of light to outline the tiles beneath Rinzler's feet, just before a coherent column of blue light shot toward the ceiling, enclosing the program completely. Quorra's intended blow scraped across the lightwall in a flash of white before she fell back into a ready crouch, face a mask of fierce concentration; not at all apologetic about the heart attack she had nearly given Sam for the sake of a _test_.

Through the lightwall's watery-smooth interface, he could see the silhouette of Rinzler tilting his head back to consider the boundaries of his new prison, and then the shadow of an arm rose in preparation for a strike from within.

"Stop!" Sam shouted, and the silhouette froze. "Stand down!"

It was only marginally reassuring to see Rinzler relaxing into a neutral pose without hesitation; at least Sam now knew there was nothing wrong with the program's acceptance of commands. But he couldn't shake the uncomfortable feeling that he had fallen into a fairy tale of genies and bottles - the ones where he had to make sure he covered every possible angle and ambiguity, lest the genie exact a grisly revenge for its imprisonment and forced servitude.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, this chapter was long! In hindsight, it really should've been two chapters, but whatever, I love 2 for the price of 1 sales! \o/
> 
> WE'RE IN THE HOME STRETCH, PEEPS! WOOOOO! I actually already have quite a few sections of the next two chapters written out, and then the tenth chapter will be an epilogue. The only thing that's going to slow me down is that I'm also working on an original project for a friend's Christmas present, so I may be preoccupied for the next month or so.
> 
> Thanks for hanging in there! As ever, thanks to the incomparable Winzler for all her cheerleading.

Justin didn't make it. He held on for a day or so, but by the next afternoon, Danny emerged with a long face and a small, quiet shake of his head. The funeral was short and simple and Sam had politely attended, but the hardest part had come later, when he had to field all of Tron's questions as to why there had been a ceremony now, but not for any of the times before.

Danny had been right. In their small community, it was easy to forget things like how, just one week ago, he had left five bodies next to the road that he hadn't mourned or thought of since. Having never been much of a person of faith, he didn't feel like he had necessarily shirked any rites, but the hotel community's payment of basic respects was a stark reminder that he had not even managed that much during their brief, solitary sojourn; had not, in fact, even noticed its lack until now.

Sleep had been long in coming that night.

The radio station occupied a tiny spit of land across the bay in Emeryville that looked like it spent just as much time underwater as above depending on the tides. Independently owned and operated, the station had broadcasted such paranoid and extremist messages as alien abductions, government conspiracies, and the coming apocalypse.

"But then the end of the world actually _did_ happen, and now the owner's got nothing left to do but play oldies and maintain the equipment," Danny had shrugged. "I don't know if he was required to install the generators as part of an emergency broadcast system or if that was his own thing, but right now, he's the only one with working electricity that we know of."

When asked where the supply of gas came from, a sour look had crossed Danny's face. "Nelson's boys or other groups, I hear. He makes deals for supplies - and protection. We keep our distance - don't want nothing to do with those folk."

Sam didn't either, but the draw of the generators was a strong one, and so only two days after they had arrived in San Francisco, Sam asked to borrow the truck and was soon knocking on the station's door.

The building looked like it was barely more than a prefab shed. A two story affair that was more tall than it was wide, the corrugated metal top rattled with every breeze. The generators were squat silhouettes rumbling away in its shadow while the slender wand of the mast antenna extended far overhead, its guy-wires occasionally singing. Sam could smell the fumes of spent gasoline in the air; something which made his gut pinch with nebulous memories of garages and smoggy city vapors, even as his nose wrinkled.

"What are you going to build with this?"

"What?" Sam tilted his head, wondering if the clatter he had heard was another shake from the roof or had come from inside. "What do you mean?"

"With the energy. What are you going to use it to build?"

Sam cast the program a sharp look, feeling inexplicably put on the spot by what should have been an innocent question. "It's not like the Grid, Tron. You can't just use pure energy to build here."

The earnest, curious gaze shadowed. "Then what - "

 _"You were just here yesterday! Y'can't have gone through that batch already - "_

The muffled holler from inside made them both jump just before the door was tugged open with a grating squeal, abruptly leaving Sam eye-to-hoary-beard when he turned to face the entrance. "Uh, hey," he offered as he backslid and looked up.

There were few people these days who were quite as plump as they had been, but the man who appeared in the doorway still had a broad-shouldered frame that a bear wouldn't have been shy to claim. Obviously getting by just fine where provisions were concerned, the station owner seemed to be just sliding down the wrong side of middle age, wearing a worn SF State zip hoodie over a stained blue t-shirt and jeans so baggy, they might have slid down if not propped by an ample gut. Sam doubted that the beard - a curly mat blanketing half the man's chest - had seen any worse days since the apocalypse.

Gimlet eyes squinted down at him, the folds around them so loose that they hid the whites, making their dark stare strangely unnerving. "Who're you?" he demanded bluntly.

Sam tried to marshal his thoughts. It was clear that this wasn't a man who wanted for much, and the extra resources he thought he might be able to bargain with from his share of the community's efforts were probably worth less than he had hoped. "Hi, uh, I'm Sam Flynn, and this is Tron. We heard your radio station, and wanted to ask - "

"Like the game?"

Sam blinked. The man didn't, his gaze now fixed upon Tron, who only straightened beneath the blatant stare as if preparing to meet a challenge. "I - uh, I beg your pardon?"

"The game! Tron! The lightcycle races - what, you some sort of fanboy?" the man leaned in with a curl of his lip, until he and the program had barely enough room in which to focus on each other.

"I've been in the races, yes," Tron answered unhesitantly.

"Yes - well, no, it's complicated, look can we just talk with you about -" Sam tried to override before stuttering to a halt, slack-jawed, when the man abruptly leaned back and declared fiercely, "Greetings, Program!"

Sam gaped in dumb astonishment. Tron positively lit up. "Greetings!" he declared just as fiercely, before their hands met with an audible slap, the program just a split-second slower with the freshly learned user custom.

Miles Dillon, as it turned out, had been a lifelong gamer. With even the mere _possibility_ of having working servers again and even a former "Encom in-house game tester" to pit his skills against, he had been almost embarrassingly eager to offer his station's resources.

If Sam had not needed to complete his share of the community work that day, he might very well have borrowed some flashlights and their carefully hoarded batteries and gone searching for spare servers into the dead of night. As it was, he slept only fitfully through the evening after chores were done and was up well before the sun rose, pacing impatiently until the first weak light of dawn began to pick out silhouettes from shadows. The truck was with Alec, who insisted that the vehicle was needed for the day's scavenging, but had offered directions to the nearest cluster of corporate offices that were still standing. Sam had wasted no time in collecting Tron after that.

There were still plenty of vehicles to choose from lining the city streets, and with less stringent requirements this time, Sam made a much more leisurely pick. After wistfully eyeing some of the sportier selections - including one noteworthy bike - he settled on a hatchback that assured plenty of space for some server slices, and maybe even a minimal rack to install them in.

Mind still awhirl with the possibilities now that he had access to steady electricity, Sam was curled deep beneath the car's dash when a tap upon his shoulder had him starting and nearly grazing his head on the driving shaft. "Just gimme a min, I'm almost done - "

"Sam, something's wrong."

Sam immediately stilled, trying to gauge the program's level of concern from the angle of his feet beneath the door's edge. Tron had originally been playing with the remaining crumbles of the driver's side window Sam had broken, fascinated by the safety glass' crisp, crackled fractures. He was standing with his back to the car now, though, weight poised ever so slightly forward, over the balls of his feet ... and Sam slowly extricated himself, eyes immediately searching the street, hands loose and ready.

It was a narrow, two-lane affair between buildings tall enough to cast a perpetual shadow, saved from being called an alley only by dint of even narrower openings branching from it at irregular intervals. It did not take long to ascertain the source of Tron's concern - within the closest mouths of these channels, human-shaped silhouettes were lurking.

"How many, you think?" Sam murmured even as he turned slowly to make his own estimate.

"More than six." Tron tilted his head, listening. "Perhaps as many as ten."

It would probably take him another minute to jump the car; with the increasingly computerized models that the auto industry had been rolling out, he had more often depended on hacking than manual starts of vehicles when he had cared to dabble in such pursuits at all. If there was trouble, Tron _might_ be able to hold them off that long.

He wasn't keen on testing that assessment. "Hello!" Sam called out, deciding on a direct approach, and was not surprised when there was no response. Verbally, anyway. A scuff of shoes, a clinking clatter that might have been chains, and then people were stepping out into the street. Four ... seven ... nine men, dressed in the same hodgepodge affair that all survivors these days wore, but somehow rougher all the same. There was certainly no mistaking the motley collection of knives, steel bars, broken bottles and other improvised weapons that they already had in hand, expressions set in a myriad of variations between grim chill and mocking leers.

"Look, we don't want any trouble," Sam began, making a last ditch effort as he slipped out from behind the door and swung it gently to, now shoulder-to-shoulder with Tron.

"But we do," a mustached man retorted, resting his weapon of choice - a crowbar - against his shoulder.

Sam looked pointedly at the array of men surrounding them in a loose circle. "Yeah? Looks kind of crowded, though. I don't think there'll be enough to go around."

The man grinned, baring incongruously even but yellowed teeth. "Don't worry, we're good at sharing, aren't we, boys?"

"Look, we don't have anything on us worth shaking down," Sam made one last attempt, shifting to feel the brush of Tron's shoulder against his and taking heart from the tense, ready flex of the muscle beneath. "If you want a car or two, though, I'm sure we can make a deal."

"We're not looking t'make another deal. We're here t'settle one," the man sneered, all hints of joviality gone as he motioned with his chin and the ring began to tighten. "You took out some of our men. We're here t'take payment for that."

Sam's stomach plummeted and he reluctantly shifted his feet farther apart, hands curling into fists. "They are here for retribution," Tron murmured, more statement than question; the program settling into a variation of his trademark ready-stance though he was currently empty-handed.

"Hey, at least we don't haveta worry about innocent bystanders this time," Sam breathed, busily assessing the movements of the men he's facing. "Think we can take them on our own?"

The joke had been unthinking and innocent, and at first, Tron's hissed, "Yes!" startled him with its vehemence. Then he flushed at the memory of the argument they had never settled in the warehouse, but before he could protest that he had not been thinking of Tron's alter ego at all, the program snapped a low, "Keep your back to the vehicle," and there was abruptly cool air behind him. Tron was taking the fight to their ambushers, drawing the majority of them away. Sam cursed as he was forced to obey when the remaining three, emboldened, rushed him instead, glass crunching beneath his shoes as he squared both shoulders against the car's side.

Sam had encountered his share of scuffles, mostly in clubs or just outside of them, and wasn't afraid to wade into the thickest part of things if he felt bored or riled enough. But they had been free-for-all, fisticuff brawls, where every man fought for himself and the only time Sam had to worry about overwhelming force was when two people accidentally picked the same target.

Gangs were something else with their loose bands bonded by (sometimes vicious) peer pressure, and he was too much of a loner to have ever felt comfortable taking any sort of attention from them, whether of the antagonistic or recruitment variety. He was painfully reminded of that now as he ducked the swing of a bar from the right, more glass raining down on him as it slammed into the side of the car, and threw himself forward, head down as he ploughed into the man directly in front of him to take them both down in a tackle. Rolling away rather than be pinned by a one-on-one fight, he saw only the fleeting shadow of movement to his right before kicking out reflexively. It wasn't a direct hit, but the grunt and lack of a follow-up told him he had managed enough damage to win himself some breathing room; one which he was quick to capitalize upon by putting the half-mangled car at his back once more.

He wasn't as smooth or quick as Tron, not by a longshot, but there had been no better sparring partners he could have found other than Quorra and Tron. At the very least, he couldn't help thinking sourly, he had learned the important lesson of dodging, and after weeks' worth of practice - first evading blackguards, then two of the fastest virtual warriors that the Grid could offer - he had yet to collect anything more serious at the moment than a glancing blow on an arm that had temporarily numbed his fingers.

"What the hell is - "

" - didn't say we were facing off with the godamn Karate Kid!"

The man with the steel bar wavered, glancing over his shoulder, distracted by the distant complaints. Sam knew exactly what to expect from the knot of fighting surrounding Tron however, and felt his lips peel back in a savage grin as he lunged - shouldering the weapon aside to shove a knee into the man's gut, then followed up with a punch that made his knuckles throb and knocked the man out cold. He didn't quite manage to dodge a retaliatory fist from one of the others, head ringing, but the bar was more important, and as soon as he wrested it from the unconscious body he was swinging it wide to make the remaining two attackers jump back, swaying as he pushed himself to his feet. "Now it's starting to get fun, right?" he spat, cheek already feeling hot and stiff.

One seemed braver than the other, holding his ground while his partner started to slide back, but Sam could tell that he was wavering too. Bullies draw strength from numbers and overwhelming advantage; as soon as their victim starts to put up enough of a fight, their interest wanes. So he wasted no time in trying to convince them he was more than they wanted to chew on right now; with a snarl, he leapt forward, crowbar swinging.

"Forget it, I'm not getting enough out of this to risk breaking something!" the one hanging back growled, backpedaling.

"Shut up! You wanna deal with a skinny white punk or you wanna deal with the boss when he finds out you turned tail?" the other argued, but he was already grudgingly following and Sam froze with his stolen weapon held high, barely daring to blink in case some whim changed their minds.

"There ain't no clinics around to fix you anymore! You seen Maurice's foot lately? Forget it, man, Tay brought his piece ... I think two bullets make a better lesson to the others than - "

Sam's breath hitched and his eyes swerved toward the other skirmish, and thank god his own opponents were already fleeing because they could have taken him down right then and there with his distraction, crowbar or not.

Three unconscious bodies already littered the ground on the opposite side of the street, and Tron was holding his own against three more; looking as if he was merely waiting for the opportune moment to put another one of them down while he kept his ground. But when one disengaged, seemingly leaving his buddies to fend for themselves, it wasn't to follow the other two who now lurked nervously on the edges of the scene - Sam felt cold fingers drag down his spine as the man reached beneath his jacket and drew an ominous, dark shape.

"Tron, look out!" Sam shouted, and while the program's gaze flicked his way at the warning, the others had him hemmed in and busy, and Sam could only think to draw his arm back and fling the crowbar just as the gunman aimed -

The man flinched, shoulder jerking upwards as he ducked, and the shot went wide as its echoes funneled down the street. Sam was only able to savor his relief for a single breath though, before the muzzle abruptly swung toward him and there was another, sharp _crack_ -

He couldn't quite remember how he ended up on the ground, staring up at the cloud-hazed sky and gasping like a landed fish, but instinct was already trying to scrape him upright while his right arm fell alternately numb, then burning.

 _"Sam!"_

God, he had never heard a snarl like that before, pure fury and panic and it pushed Sam to fight just that little bit harder to reorient himself, rolling over in time to see -

Someone was still hanging off of Tron's back, one arm locked around his neck from behind, but the program was lunging at the gunman as if he was carrying no weight at all. The gun fired again just as he reached for him, and Sam flinched but hadn't managed to croak out more than a reflexive, "Tron - !" before the clean sound of bone snapping and the shooter's howl rang clearly through the street. Glass shattered as Tron threw his hanger-on into a car's side, and reached with the same movement to tangle fingers in the gunman's hair, swinging his head into the windshield with a savage grace that made the gorge rise in Sam's throat.

  
(illustration by Baysalt)

Tron was using lethal force - _Tron_ was fighting with intent to kill, and it should not be happening now, not before Sam had called forth the actual killer, and more than shock or pain, the realization of what might be happening - what _must_ be happening - made his breath come short and the world swim before his eyes.

"No ... no, Tron ... "

Tron lashed out with the blade of his hand, and a man fell back with a horrible gurgle, clutching his ruined throat.

"Tron, stop it - !"

Light flashed off a knife, and Tron leaned out of its reach with sinuous grace before darting back in like a snake. In the space of a blink, the blade had exchanged hands as another body fell, and this time, when it whipped out, it was the remaining ambusher who was scrambling backwards.

"Tron, it's not - it's supposed to be Rinzler! Release Rinzler, damnit, release Rinzler!"

Sam didn't know if it would help, didn't know what he was even thinking anymore, except that it seemed unacceptable - a perversion - for Tron to stain his hands like Rinzler's were. So logic demanded that Rinzler step forward to claim his rightful place, and Sam watched numbly to see if there was any difference, any change at all to indicate there was a transition from one personality to another as the program dispatched his last opponent with economical precision.

Tron - Rinzler - looked up while crouched over the body, head tilted to follow the pell-mell sound of panicked footsteps running rapidly away. When he tensed to follow, Sam croaked belatedly, "No! No ... let them go." A full-body shudder rattled his teeth and he winced, glancing once at the spreading stain on his shoulder and quickly looking away again with a swallow. "Never mind that, we better ... we better get back. I need to see Danny, and ... and we made it, Tron."

The program gave a slow blink, but otherwise, didn't move.

Sam felt nausea climb up his throat. "Tron ... c'mon, Tron! I said _we made it!_ "

"I know you did."

The relief at those deadpan words was dizzying. Or maybe it was shock, which had already chilled his fingertips. "Well jesus christ, maybe you could've said so, then," he groused as he started to haul himself back to his feet with the help of the car, already braced for the sharp-edged retort ... that didn't come.

"I thought I just did." Tron was close enough now to offer a supporting hand, and Sam stared - tried to find anything acerbic in the smooth expression, any hint of the bitter dissatisfaction which had characterized their exchange in the warehouse, now that he had taken matters into his own hands again.

He found nothing. Almost no emotion at all. Only a mild, almost dreamy ambivalence; the program's eyes clearly focused elsewhere even as he put a hand beneath Sam's good elbow.

Sam didn't say anything more on the way back, afraid of what the responses would be. Tron didn't say anything more either.

"You're lucky, it went right through the muscle," Danny declared as he squinted through his spectacles at the entry and exit wounds. "The bleeding's already slowed considerably. Here, pop two of these while I get my suture kit," he dropped two of their carefully hoarded supply of painkillers into Sam's palm as he got up.

"He will be all right?" Xiao Yen asked from where she had been anxiously hovering near the door. She had been the first to spot them when they had limped back, and had dropped her gardening tools on the spot to find Danny.

"Even better, he'll have a nice scar to brag about to the ladies," Danny snorted as he settled himself back on his stool, metal creaking as he adjusted his weight and sorted out a sterile needle packet. "Do I need to give you a local before I start?"

Sam rolled his eyes, dry swallowing the pills and trying not to gag at the residual bitterness at the back of his throat. "Yeah, just what I need, even more charm." He grimaced at the doc's matter-of-fact question - just like the pills, who knew when they would be able to replenish such supplies, if ever - and declared with bombastic bravado, "I've gotten in enough scrapes before to handle a few stitches without help."

"Is that how you scared them away?" Xiao Yen teased, sounding a little more confident now that it was clear Sam was not seriously hurt. "By talking."

"Sure. All I had to do was make myself big and terrifying and yell a lot. They're all cowards. They ran away."

"The extra-large gauge needle it is," Danny drawled as Sam mimed a horrified wince and the woman smothered a laugh. "Xiao Yen, why don't you go collect the kids; everything's fine now."

Eric had been tagging along when the Xiao yen had returned with Danny, and while they had initially tried to shoo the child off when he stopped, wide-eyed and staring at Sam's condition, Sam had jumped at the chance to assign him to Tron instead with the hope that Eric's typical barrage of questions would thaw the program from his weird fugue state. "Hey, Xiao Yen? Mind making sure Tron has another bowl of that bean-veggie-mushroom something gravy over rice thing you made yesterday? I think he really liked it."

The woman dimpled and nodded graciously. "How he eats, I think he likes _everything_ ... like he has never eat anything before. Yes, of course, Sam. You are a good friend," she said warmly before closing the door gently behind her.

Her words somehow left him feeling like even more of a heel than before.

"So, what _really_ happened out there?"

Danny timed his question with the first jab of the needle, and Sam jumped with a yelp, throwing a glower the doctor's way when there was a muttered admonishment to hold still. His retort was half-hearted though, and soon enough under the old man's prodding, he gave up the details that he had edited out of the version he had told in Xiao Yen's presence. Danny made a few more pointed inquiries, and by the time they were done with the interrogation, Sam's shoulder was also neatly cleaned and gauzed up.

Danny peered over his glasses at Sam, expression sober, then rose to clean up the used supplies. "I think you should drop this electricity thing."

Sam gaped in the middle of searching for something more appropriate than his blood-soaked shirt to put on. "What? Why? We could improve so many things around here with even a small - !"

"We're getting by just fine so far without it!" Danny pointed out gruffly with a short wave of his hand. "And it's already stirring up trouble with Nelson's gang - "

"Well, maybe we shouldn't just settle for 'getting by'," Sam asserted, hissing in frustration when a reflexive bunching of his shoulders pulled at the wound. "And whatever beef they've got is with Tron and me - "

"It's not 'just' Tron and you," Danny warned, turning to pin Sam with a frown. "You two stay _here_ , with _us,_ and that's how they're going to see it eventually."

Sam released a loud breath, pacing away with a scowl because he wasn't fool or bastard enough to deny that possibility. "But think about the food we could preserve with basic refrigeration ... or even your medical equipment! You're, like, practically using middle ages medicine here ... "

"I haven't quite fallen back upon leeches, thank you very much," the doctor grunted bitterly. "Look, I'd be the last person to deny the benefits of working electricity, but I'm not willing to pay all prices for it. That was your first warning," he pointed a gnarled finger at Sam's shoulder. "You might not get a second."

Sam thought he could understand, now, a little of what his father had gone through in making Encom; of the pressures he had to face down in order to bring his visions into reality. Who knew where Alec had learned of his plans for the radio station through the community grapevine, but the man had taken a similarly dim view of his efforts, and not been shy in making his opinions public. Sam _knew_ , though, with the same certainty as he expected the sun to rise every morning, that there would be no hope for reclaiming anything from the industrial age onwards unless they could get a steady supply of electricity again.

He was not going to complain if the path to buying Miles' heart and cooperation was to set up a game server.

"Think we can get a test run soon?" the man asked over his shoulder from where he sat, half-reclined, in a cracked leather executive chair before his aging broadcasting systems; the same question he had asked at the end of every one of the past eight days Sam had visited. Sam had learned to step carefully around certain subjects in the station owner's presence, but otherwise, the fellow had proved a jovial enough character, filled with stories and theories that alternately made Sam's head spin and then doubled him over with laughter.

He had liberated two server slices running the Encom OS after breaking into a corporate network closet without further incident. After that, Sam had spent every free moment he had crouched before a screen, attempting to patch and modify them enough to load the Grid 2.0 proprietary data format. Other than his share of the hotel chores, Sam spent most of his time in the East Bay now - even meals, he sometimes either shared with Miles, or had dropped off by Tron.

The program never referenced the fight in which Sam had been shot. Sometimes, his gaze would go blank and disturbed when he caught Sam rubbing at the ache in his healing shoulder, but otherwise, acted as if the event had never happened. Sam would be even more freaked by it if he wasn't so god-awful grateful that Tron was staying fully occupied at the hotel. Other than zipping back and forth across the Bay on a bike Sam had hotwired for him or giving Eric the occasional joyride, the program had been firmly tucked under the wing of various members in the community while Sam was distracted. In their occasional interactions over the past week, Tron had seemed locked into a permanent state of bemusement ... but, most reassuringly, he had acted like _Tron_ , and not some blank-faced automaton.

"Maaaaaaaaybe," Sam gave his standard response, but something in his tone must have given him away because there was a squeal of over-taxed springs and then the lumbering steps of Miles approaching him from behind.

"You got something," the man declared, expectation clear in his voice as he squatted down beside Sam's seat on the dusty floor.

Sam took a deep breath and rubbed abruptly sweaty palms upon his jeans when the screen cleared from his latest udpate. The cursor blinked cheerfully next to a standard command prompt. "Maybe," he continued to hedge, but he didn't bother concealing his excitement as he tugged a USB drive out from beneath his collar, ducking out of its lanyard and plugging it in.

The small blue and black square, hardly bigger than the first joint of his thumb, contained the state data for the Grid just before the UPS had given out; a snapshot that had been triggered as soon as the main power source had been cut. The drive was not big enough to contain all the programs and environmental parameters needed to run the Grid independently, but hopefully Sam's modifications to the Encom servers would do that part - he just needed to initialize them with the right values, which was where the USB drive came in.

The rubberized grips were worn from handling, glossy and smooth. Sam had rolled it over and over between his fingers in the first weeks after seattle, until it seemed like every ridge and imperfection had been transferred directly to his skin. Now, he consciously clenched his fingers against the urge to run them over its surface once again as the server clicked and whirred, explaining while he waited for the data to load, "I'm going to load a program to test the compatibility. If everything's set up right, she'll be able to help me work from the inside and debug problems with anything we install later on."

"She?" A hirsute brow arched as Miles leaned in with a smirk. "You're an RPer, aren't you? I bet you even gave her a name."

Caught flat-footed, Sam turned to blink at the man, nearly cross-eyed at the sudden proximity. "Hey, personal space man, 'specially since I don't know when the last time you had a shower was," he snorted, leaning back dramatically as he shoved at the radio operator's shoulder. "Yeah, of course the program's got a name, what else am I gonna call it, 'hey you, the prompt'?"

Miles cackled, rocking back obediently with the shove. "Yeah? So, what'd you name 'her'?" he waggled his brows in emphasis with the pronoun.

Sam rolled his eyes, but didn't bother with a verbal response when he saw the return of the prompt on the screen. Breath held, he dove for the keys.

 **> run GridSandbox3  
> load Quorra  
> send ACK**

 **Loading ...**

Miles squinted at the screen while Sam chewed on his lip, hands clenched tight upon his knees as he waited for the server to run through its cycles. "Quorra, huh?" the man mumbled. "What's that supposed t'be? Some sorta acronym?"

"It's just a name," Sam brushed off, barely conscious of his own response as he silently counted out the seconds beneath his breath. Thirteen ... fourteen ... fifteen ... surely it should have finished by now, the servers were top of the line ...

 **ACK received  
Greetings USER SamFlynn**  
>

The drive west into San Francisco was a blur of shadows, the silvery trail of a half-moon reflected in the bay's dark waters far beneath, and a single incongruous spurt of headlights flashing through the deck railings below him; another vehicle passing by on the bridge's east-bound level. His hands still felt tight and cramped from the fifteen minutes of furious typing he had indulged in to bring Quorra up to speed, ignoring all of Miles' inquiries until the man had given up with a disgruntled mutter and left him to his own devices. As soon as Quorra's curiosity had been temporarily sated, though, Sam had started the loading process for the rest of the Grid to keep her company while he jumped on his bike. Now, he screeched to a halt before the hotel, which glowed with more candle-light than usual for this hour of the night, but which reassured him that people were still up and unlikely to be too peeved with him as he ran up to the entrance, calling out, "Tron! Hey, Tron! Where are you?"

One of the Mexican women - Maria, he thought her name was - poked her head out into the foyer, eyes owlishly wide, before she was suddenly waddling rapidly away, a mad patter of Spanish rolling off her tongue. Before Sam could more than blink after her, however, Xiao Yen was summoned like magic by the disturbance, and she sent Maria off in another direction with a gentle nudge and some broken Spanish before she was bustling up to him, brow furrowed anxiously. "Sam! What is the matter? Is there more trouble?"

"What? No no no, it's not trouble, it's the _best_ news - " Sam assured as he squeezed her arms, craning his head over hers to search for any others who might have emerged from the rooms. "Do you know where Tron is? He'll want to hear this - "

"Tron? He is with Danny and Alec - " Xiao Yen half-turned, pointing in the direction of the makeshift clinic, and Sam was already stepping around her when she clutched at his hand. "Wait! There is something big - "

"Can it wait just ten seconds? I promise, it'll only take me, like, five words to get out and then I swear I'll - "

"Sam!"

People were suddenly coming out of the woodworks, it seemed, and Sam began to feel the first trickles of apprehension as he noticed just how many residents were still up. But it had been Tron finally who was calling his name, and he bulled his way forward with a grin, determined to at least get his news out. "Tron! God, you won't believe this, but I ran the test, and you know what? It worked! It's _loaded_ and _running_ and - "

Tron abruptly grasped Sam's arm, his security face on. "Sam, we're going to be under attack. They're going to attack the radio station, and they're going to attack the hotel."

" - Quorra even ... what?" Sam felt his grin melt from his face as he stared, before he was suddenly clutching just as tightly at the program's shoulders. "Wait, what?"

Tron winced, but from the uncomfortable, sideways flick of his gaze, it was not from the pinch of Sam's grip. "The gangs. They know about the servers. And they're going to make an example of the hotel. They could show up any nano - any minute now ... "

"How do they know about the servers? Why would they - they've made deals with Miles, why would they - " Sam stuttered, before memory was abruptly knocking for attention. Driving across the upper deck of the bridge ... a flash of yellow-tinted headlights from the deck below, passing in the opposite direction ... "Oh jesus," he breathed. "We don't have time. That must've been them - they're already headed for the station!"

Tron grimaced. "That's ... unfortunate. We'll have to leave it to Miles - we need to figure out how to lay down defenses here. I've already mapped the perimeter and exits, and the weakest points are - "

"No, we can't just leave it to Miles! Tron, I left the USB drive to load, the Grid's running right now, _Quorra's_ running!" Sam hissed.

Tron hesitated, conflict plain upon his face, but then shook himself and Sam could almost see the priorities clicking into place, the program's legendary will cementing them like a fortress curtain for the coming siege. "Quorra can take care of herself. These people _need_ us - "

"It doesn't work like that in the user world, Tron! The damage that could occur if anything's interrupted, data corruption, we could lose them all - !"

"Sam, you have to choose! The people here need you to lead them, Alec's not going to be able to - "

"From what you're saying, I don't _have_ a choice!" Sam snarled, shoving himself away.

Tron jerked as if he had been struck, lips peeling back in a snarl that Sam had never seen directed toward him until now. "I was talking about the choice between the past and the present, but yes, maybe _now_ you know how it feels."

Time pressed on him like a physical pressure, and his desperation felt like something tangible; a chasm waiting to yawn open just behind his heels for the next, unwary step.

They were so close. They had Miles, they had electricity, they had the damned _Grid_ running and he had _just_ talked to Quorra like it had been any other chat they had frequently traded while Sam had been bored by Encom meetings and paperwork ...

Tron's gaze suddenly flattened, the lines around his mouth smoothing away. It was a few pounding heartbeats before Sam even realized he had spoken aloud ... and what betraying words had slipped from his mouth. "Rinzler," he breathed, tentative, almost afraid as he realized just where his subconscious had led him.

The dark-haired head dipped.

Sam closed his eyes. Licked dry lips. Husked, "Go to the radio station. As fast as you can. Defend Miles, save the Grid ... save the Grid, and save Quorra."

If he was to be damned for a penny, then he may as well be damned for a pound.

* * *

Sam had been on only two camping trips in his life, back when his father had been on a return-to-nature riff. What little he could remember involved well-outfitted trucks, rented motor homes, and one sagging tent that had been left in a morass of mud as they took shelter in a motel from a flash thunderstorm. He had been inducted into the ranks of the Boy Scouts for all of six months before Alan had withdrawn him when it became obvious there would be ever-escalating embarrassments - certainly not enough time for him to have earned his woodcraft badges. And while he had, at least, put his kitchen to the occasional use, he was just as guilty as the next bachelor of resorting most often to pre-processed foods and delivery; his utensils drawer had been filled with take-out menus and pizza coupons and maybe three forks, if he had done the dishes the night before.

So when they were left with a small half-pack's worth of mostly junk food - the only things he was sure would not spoil - between them about a week and a half south of Portland, Sam was frustrated, but not overly surprised by how they had ended up in such straits. "Who knew Home Economics would've prepared someone for an apocalypse?" he grimaced as he squinted at the cloudy mixture within a jar of marinated artichoke hearts before tossing it over his shoulder.

The shadow of Tron's figure shifted, but when the expected question about unfamiliar terms didn't come, Sam glanced up to see only a mildly inquiring look directed toward him. Feeling just piqued enough by their situation to wait out the program instead of volunteering the information without being explicitly asked, he arched an eyebrow. Only a second or two slid by before Tron shrugged and turned an impassive look upon their surroundings.

Now feeling like a jerk as well as a moron, Sam stuffed the few cans and potato chips that were left back into the bag with more force than necessary and hefted it over his shoulder. "We should start rationing things," he said gruffly as he turned his face toward the south and began walking again.

The lush wetland and riparian vistas of the Northwest had given way to the sere yellow grasses of a drier climate. The plain green freeway board declaring cheerfully in a freehand script, "Welcome to California" was a day behind them when the paved road began to wind upwards, into velvety foothills that could probably have been rightly called a low mountain range if they had hosted a few craggy peaks instead of gently rounded tops.

Sam had cause to be thankful that the season was moving into a chilly Autumn rather than a baking Summer heat; while he had known enough to bring as much water as they could carry beyond food itself, he had not realized just how few opportunities they would have to refill the farther south they went. He was partially reassured when, half a day into the hills, they could see the clear gleam of a large body of water to the west, nestled between folds of land and too close to be the undrinkable ocean. That evening, there was a road sign declaring that they were near a man-made reservoir.

By the next day, he was even entertaining vague thoughts of checking for fish. While he had not thought to scavenge hooks and line when they had been raiding recreational sports stores in Seattle, between the swiss army knife and host of other small tools that he _had_ picked up, he was fairly confident he could cobble together something to net them something fresh. While he had subsisted solely on potato chips and soda for days before when holed up on some particularly intense project (and one memorable week of gaming), Sam was discovering that doing so while on a cross-country trek was a far different story than while remaining mostly inanimate before a stationary terminal. A bone-deep ache and weariness seemed to have taken up a permanent residence that no amount of sleep would cure, and he was pretty certain that he had dropped a few pounds by now that new muscle mass had not made up for.

Stomach grumbling at the mere thought of a toasted, flaky filet with skin crisped just-so replacing the peanut butter cracker sandwich in his back pocket, Sam had already stepped off the road before he was brought up short by Tron's, "Where are you going?"

There was a beat at the unexpected interruption before he gathered enough wits to half-turn and answer, "Toward the reservoir."

"Why?"

It took him a moment to realize that the unpleasant clench in his middle was not due to hunger or indigestion. "Why?" he echoed with slow caution. "'Cause there might be fish."

But rather than ask after the nature of fish or what it had to do with them, Tron simply looked pensive; an eyebrow-twitch shy of a full-out frown as he looked back to the road, gauging the upward curve of it with poorly concealed anxiety. "Perhaps we should keep going. It is only another hour or two until dark."

Sam stared. Tron had never before questioned their direction, never shown much interest in their destination beyond what preparations needed to be made ahead of time. He had seemed perfectly content with following Sam's lead - at least, until now - and he had certainly never shown anything close to worry over the mere fall of night. In fact, he had initially been awed and skittish by turns when faced with the full glory of the sun and its illuminating power. "We've been camping out in the wilderness for over a month now, I don't think it makes much difference if we're sleeping in the grass or by the road. What's wrong?"

Tron glanced toward him, drew a breath - and then released it without another word. One last, almost-furtive look was paid the road before the program shook his head and stepped off, onto the crumbly earth. Sam thought about pressuring for an answer since it was obvious that there was something bothering him; but figuring also that if it was so obvious, Tron would eventually speak up, he eventually turned around and continued picking his way toward the distant glitter of the reservoir.

An hour or so later, Tron didn't so much speak up as perform the equivalent of tripping and faceplanting.

But since this was Tron, he didn't exactly fall on his face, and managed to just catch himself on one knee and his hands before he made that critical error. The sound had caused Sam to turn sharply enough that he thought he had caught the program in a rare, split-second of clumsiness, and he even squeezed out a single laugh before stopping uncertainly.

Tron wasn't getting back up.

"Hey. Did you twist an ankle or something?" he asked, walking back, and didn't quite realize how how far ahead he had gotten until it took a good dozen strides to reach the program. "Uhm, your leg or foot, I mean," he added belatedly as he crouched down, "does anything hurt?"

"No ... nothing hurts," Tron answered only when Sam moved to touch his shoulder, pushing himself more upright, but not off the ground. Face still averted, he grimaced and admitted with something close to shame or embarrassment, "I'm just ... I just need a short down cycle."

Tron had been out of the system for well over a month now, and it had been a while since he had lapsed into system terms since learning the proper user language for things. "You're tired?" Sam prompted uneasily, flopping down for a seat also. "Sure, no problem, take your time. Need to catch my breath too ... "

Tron's shoulders hitched a little higher and his head hunched a little lower, but in spite of Sam's transparency, the program didn't call him on it. Instead, he rolled his weight back as well for a more comfortable seat upon the ground; head turned away as he ostensibly eyed the darkening horizon.

Sam, in turn, stared hard at Tron and made no effort to hide that fact.

Tron had always made a slender figure, all lithe lines rather than bulk, and it was difficult to tell - especially in the falling dusk - whether he had changed at all since his first introduction to the user world. At first, Sam worried whether he would be able to make out any differences in just the relatively short time they had been resolved in the real world ... then began to realize that maybe he should be worried there _weren't_ any obvious differences since he had first laid eyes on a breathing, flesh-and-blood rendition of the virtual warrior.

"Are you getting enough sleep?"

A bemused twitch, and Tron answered phlegmatically, "I do not believe it is disturbed."

It had been a surprise to learn that Tron would never need to worry about a five o'clock shadow. Sam had counted it a small blessing at the time that shaving was one thing he would not need to teach the program, but now he began to wonder - and worry - what else might be different. "Do you feel sick? Like there is any sort of - of internal malfunction or something?"

He could see Tron's eyes flicking toward him, though the head remained resolutely in profile. "No."

He hoped to god it wasn't some weird cancer or disorder or something. He would ask if the program was getting enough exercise, but it was rather ridiculous to consider after the hundreds of miles they had covered on foot. In fact, looking at him more closely now, Sam had to wonder if the program needed to exercise at all - granted, his memory may be imperfect, but Tron really _did_ look as if he was still in the exact same shape as he had been, in _or_ freshly out of the system. "So ... do you - " he began slowly, trying to tease out other possibilities for the fatigue, because there really was no reason that someone who could regularly wipe his butt all over the arena floor should be feeling more tired than he was -

And then his stomach gave a sudden and impolite reminder that it was well into dinner time. Reflex was already slapping a hand over that peanut butter cracker sandwich before he paused at a sudden and disturbing insight. "Tron ... how hungry are you?"

This time, the program's brow knit in blatant confusion. "Is there a value for hunger that I am able to access?"

Sam grimaced, waved a hand vaguely, and finally just pulled out the slightly-smushed snack and held it out dangling by a corner of its cellophane wrapper. "This. How many of these do you think you can eat?"

Finally, Tron turned to face him fully, expression a mask of skepticism. "I ... do not think I can give an accurate assessment - "

" _Try_. C'mon, man - one? Five? Ten ... fifteen .. twenty ... " He began to trail off as Tron's mouth thinned with the progressively higher numbers, face tight with something he could only interpret as a wholly unconscious _need_. As soon as he was able to get past the half-hysterical thought of how strange it was to see anyone older than three salivating visibly after a Keebler snack like that, he finally finished with a quiet, "That hungry, huh?" and tossed the crackers into the program's lap.

"Sam - " Tron predictably protested, flinching as if a snake had landed in his hands instead. "This is your share - "

"Forget it," Sam waved it away, pushing himself to his feet. "Enjoy. I'll grab my share later. I just need a walk to warm up."

In a way, Tron had become a sort of demigod in the real world, just as users were on the Grid. He was given a perfect form by the laser because that was how he had been coded, and the code would, supposedly, have maintained him in that form forever - had already, pretty much, for the subjective equivalent of over a thousand years. So, what exactly did it take to maintain that perfect form in the real world, all the time?

Sam had worked out enough to know what sort of appetite and fuel it took to maintain a certain amount of muscle mass. He had also picked up enough biology in the weight room to know that the body cannibalized muscle just as happily as fat for fuel if resources were slim, which was why one did _not_ diet during a body-building regimen. And so he had to consider, for someone like Tron - who had little fat to begin with and a physique that could have been the envy of professional athletes and armed forces - where did he get the resources to maintain that perfect form if it never grew flabby, never became thinner, never _changed_?

Sam abandoned the reservoir as soon as he returned from his stroll to collect Tron. That night, under the cool light of a quarter moon and a small splash of the Milky Way - unbelievably bright and vivid now, with no competing lights and eyes fully adjusted to darkness - he rummaged through their bags as Tron slept, redistributing the share of food supplies that they had left. Instead of the even divide that had existed before, he now apportioned roughly three-quarters of the combined calories into Tron's pack, and found himself worrying over the surfeit of refined carbs and general lack of protein.

The next day, Sam started the march along the road, and his mind gnawed uselessly at whether it was a good or bad sign that Tron did not question him about his sudden change of heart. He was preoccupied enough that he had to rein his strides in by fits and starts so that the program could keep up, and he was fooling no one if Tron's fettered, unhappy air was anything to go by. But the program did not question or complain, and because Sam was hardly going to be the first to grumble under the circumstances, he kept his mouth shut.

By the second day, even Sam was beginning to stumble a bit. His feet felt inordinately heavy even as his head seemed to swim, too light to remain steady. He was belatedly recognizing their danger now - that there may not be a gas station, convenience store, or even a stocked rest stop until they were out of the hills; a topography which usually made it difficult for such infrastructure to be maintained. With no accurate way of assessing their progress, it was a gamble whether it was faster to simply forge ahead or turn around and head back the way they had come.

At high noon, that choice weighed on Sam so heavily that he fumbled to a halt, squinting at a wavering mirage between the two farthest peaks, trying to remember how far they would have to backtrack to find anything useful. Behind him, there was a rustle of cloth and then a soft thump, and he turned to find Tron slumped upon the ground, arms folded loosely over a bent knee, head resting upon them. "Tron, let's - " he began to ask, voice hoarse with weariness, but then stopped as the program raised his head ... and waited.

Sam had seen enough famine posters to know just how haunting a near-dessicated body could look. Tron's face was still full-cheeked, if pale, and he looked nothing like those hollow, skin-wrapped skeletons with their beseeching, forty-point bolded font pleading for donations. But there was a helpless exhaustion which dulled his gaze that Sam thought, quite frankly, was just as terrifying ... as if something unseen was eating away at him from the inside, an invisible malaise that sapped greedily at all his strength until he was a ghost haunting his own body. It was disquieting to see what should have been someone at the peak of their physical prowess so weakened, he would rather wait for Sam's word on whether he needed to move or not than to stand at the ready as he had always done before.

Tron was starving to death before his very eyes.

"C'mon," Sam said roughly as the decision was made for him. Tron wouldn't survive the five-plus days they needed at their current pace to get back to anything helpful up north, and so he could only hope that something would show up in time if they continued to push south.

The next day, Tron tripped so often that Sam acted as prop more often than not. Calculations on whether it would extend their chances if Sam ate more - so that he could either scout ahead or drag the program along - or if it would simply kill Tron faster kept him awake half the night.

The day after that, he thought Tron had made it a moot point when the program couldn't seem to manage anything more upright than a hunched-over seat when Sam called for a start, and in a fit of desperation-fueled gallows humor, he quipped, "Too bad there's no way for me to just trim down your processess and force a safem- "

Tron's head jerked up with more speed and animation than he had shown in half a week. Sam's mouth had gone suddenly dry, still hanging half-open as he stared right back, wondering if it could really be that easy - or merely a last mistake in a long string of them.

Backing up, he wet his lips carefully - girded with the knowledge that, for once, recklesness was not only the _best_ choice but the _only_ choice - and called Rinzler into the user world.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I can't believe it, this is it, the climax! There is still a denoument to tidy up all the loose ends, and then a far more leisurely epilogue, but otherwise, this is pretty much the crux of everything. I've literally had huge chunks of this sitting waiting for me since THREE MONTHS AGO. I can't believe I'm finally kicking it all out the door.
> 
> Thank you thank you thank you Winzler, for being relentless and giving me such rapid feedback.

There were currently sixty-eight residents at the hotel - "A lucky number," Xiao Yen had declared - six of whom were too infirm to contribute and four who were deemed too young to risk, leaving them fifty-eight defenders of more or less sound mind and body.

Sam would have been happier weeding another good quarter of them out, but when he had asked if there were any others who wished to join the non-combatants in the infirmary, someone had hollered from the back, "We couldn't do anything 'bout the bombs and we couldn't do anything 'bout the plague. It's about time there was somethin' we could actually do!" The lobby had echoed with affirming cheers from the rest; no one had been willing to be left out.

After that, it was a flurry of preparations, excitement and tension filling the narrow corridors as people struggled to block up potential entry points, posted lookouts, and moved equipment. Sam helped catalyze and organize what he could, but was mildly surprised by how few suggestions he had to offer considering the hushed and seemingly cowed state the population had been when Tron and he had first encountered. In the two weeks since he had arrived, he had only gotten to know roughly a third of the permanent residents to any degree of familiarity; none of them had hinted at the thoroughness with which they had considered their home's defensible points.

"Why'd everyone put up with the gang for this long?" Sam grunted as he helped carry a short stack of stock pots up to the second floor. "I think you can take on an army twice your size by this point."

His current guide - a reed-thin man with skin so black Sam almost expected it to shine blue under the moonlight - shrugged beneath his own burden of saucepans. "Dunno, man, I haven't been here that long. I guess it was easier to just ignore them, before? That guy, kinda head honcho of this place - "

"Alec?"

"Yeah, Alec!" he nodded briskly as he dumped the kitchenware near a corridor window, the clatter making Sam wince. "He gave me a spiel about stayin' outta their way. I thought, s'cool, I'm used to keeping my head down. It's worked all right up 'till now."

"Where _is_ Alec?" Sam prompted as he set his share down with a little more care and stretching out his shoulder.

"Dunno. People've been askin' all night." The man's thick brows rose as he peered at Sam. "Hey, what about your friend, the one with the funny name, like from the game? Heard a lot 'bout him. He'd prob'ly be a lotta help in this - where's he at?"

Sam blinked mid-rotation. "Uh, he's out. There's another - he's dealing with some of the gang that's split off."

The man reared back with a whistle. "Like, all by himself? Aren't you worried?"

Sam swallowed. "Yeah," he managed quietly. "Look, I better get going ... there's still a lotta stuff that needs some extra help."

"Sure, man ... glad he's on our side. Tell him thanks for me, will ya? Good to know he's got our backs."

Sam barely choked out an affirmative before he was taking the steps two at a time back downstairs.

Thirty-plus odd men arrived no more than half an hour later, accompanied by two trucks. They were met by a dozen residents armed with everything from brooms and gardening tools to kitchen implements, clustered solidly at the end of the courtyard before the hotel entrance. Sam was not near enough to catch the exchange - as soon as they had heard the vehicles' approach, he had been running through the corridors spreading the word, dousing lamps and candles and alerting the rear lookouts. By the time he had managed to return to his own post just inside the lobby, at least half of the gang had migrated into the inner courtyard ... and as soon as the hotel vanguard appeared to break and flee back inside, luring the gang after them, a score of second floor windows shattered.

Pandemonium rained down upon the would-be attackers. Bricks, pots, pans - in one notable instance, a single blue-edged plate before the thrower's companion scolded him for wasting good dishware and replaced his next missile with a copper vase - anything with heft that could survive a good thirty foot toss was hurled down upon the exposed heads below.

Sam had to stifle a laugh at the startled cries from outside, all but lost amidst the clang and clatter of heavy projectiles smashing into the courtyard's brickwork. By the time those who were still conscious fled out of range, their numbers had been thinned considerably - but of those that were still mobile, a good portion were headed straight toward the hotel's front door.

Which was when Sam waded in. Along with the rest of the hotel's fittest men, they piled onto the gang members that made it through the entrance. What stragglers slipped past them met the second line of defense - a ring of hard-eyed women wielding shovels, pitchforks, broomsticks, and anything else they had scrounged up with a long reach and a stiff end. One particular amazon who Sam vaguely remembered as having been a volleyball player wielded a baseball bat in a perfect arc, literally taking a man right off his feet.

"Knife ... knife ... gun - but no bullets - " one of the residents tallied as the bodies were searched and the weapons handed off.

Sam straightened with a wince, shaking out a fist as he turned to take stock of the room. "Is anyone hurt badly - " he began before an abrupt roar from outside had them all freezing just as a brilliant flash of headlights glared through the half-open doors. "Look out!" he shouted along with a chorus of panicked warnings, looping his arm around the waist of the nearest resident and diving for the edge of the room.

Sam heard startled shrieks and then an awful crash as one of the trucks ran right into the entranceway, skewing sideways with a horrible crunch of metal and concrete when it caught an edge. Coughing in the sudden cloud of dust and exhaust, Sam tried to usher the closest people into the east corridor. "Into the rooms, into the rooms!" he shouted as the engine revved behind them, and the bright beams of the headlights wavered drunkenly before pulling out, leaving behind a gaping hole as the defenders scattered.

They had prepared for the eventuality of invaders, though. Sam could hear the angry shouts of the rest of the attackers catching up, and he slowed just enough to let them spot him as he ran down the narrow hallway. Sparing a quick glance over his shoulder to check just how many were on his tail, he sucked in a sharp breath and dove through an open door just in time to avoid a scatter of shots from the gun that had been pointed at his back. "Milagro, now, now!" he shouted in the direction of the corridor's end.

 _"Si!"_

The fully-loaded cleaning cart piled high with random equipment sounded like a freight train rumbling through the constricted space, the full weight of three people behind it. There were a few more futile shots, bullets pinging harmlessly off a mini-fridge stacked upon its top, before the gang members finally thought to turn back - but not before two at least were all but run over and trampled.

Sam winced at the cries and meaty thumps, cautiously venturing back out to stand next to a rotund woman whose oiled and tidy hairbun barely reached his shoulder as she ambled along at a much more leisurely pace in the cart's path. "Good job."

The hispanic woman braced her fists upon her ample hips and gave a satisfied sniff. "Gracias, Sir. Now go, go - we take care of the rest."

Sam raised his hands in mock surrender. "Yes, ma'am," he declared promptly, grinning after Milagro's rolling, imperious gait as she headed for the cart and its groaning victims. A former housecleaning maid for one of the other establishments in Fisherman's Wharf, she had taken to the task of the hotel's management like a queen to her throne.

With the way into the lobby now blocked by the cart, Sam began jogging in the other direction, following the corridor to a T-intersection where a side hall ran the length of the eastern wing. Glancing either way, he tried to sift out where the ongoing struggle seemed the thickest - before a thin scream of rage whipped Sam's head around to the rear of the hotel.

 _"Leave them alone you big - !"_

"Eric!" Sam called with a wince, wondering when the boy had picked up the expletive that followed and nearly tripping over his own feet as he darted around the corner.

Guest rooms soon gave way to utility closets and other employee areas, the hall taking a few more sharp jogs to make space for rooms with air compressors and other building maintenance machinery. One of these rear sections had been appropriated for their infirmary where Eric along with the other noncombatants had been squirreled away, but Sam could clearly hear the sounds of angry voices and a struggle echoing down the passages, and an extra spurt of panic sent him around a corner so sharply that his arm went numb catching his shoulder against it.

He was just in time to break Danny's fall when the doctor slammed into him, sending them both to the floor. Wheezing, Sam tried to catch his breath while sorting out which limbs were his and whether the old man was all right.

"Go, go!" Danny asserted with gruff impatience through his stammered concerns. "The boy - Eric!"

Trying to see past the doctor's knobby elbow as they struggled to pick themselves off the floor, Sam caught a glimpse of a stocky, square-shouldered brute just a few feet away, incongruously plucking what looked like an empty hypodermic from his lower back. In snatches past the man's measured stalk down the corridor, he could just barely make out flashes of Eric's wild thatch of dark hair and stubborn, determined expression. With a quick apology to the doctor, Sam prepared to simply fling himself over the old man and hoped he didn't accidentally kick something too painfully -

 _"Hee-yah!"_

The attacker all but stumbled over his own feet backpedaling as Xiao Yen abruptly dove through the open infirmary door, landing between him and the boy. Expression fierce, the petite woman - it would be a stretch to say she even measured up to his nose - stood with fists rigid at her sides, chin tilted upwards imperiously. "Go! Do not bother us anymore!"

"Sh'yeah right, who's gonna make me?" the man sneered, and Sam was just about to call a warning that help was on the way, shoving frantically back to his feet, when Xiao Yen brought her hands up - and he could feel the words palpably stick in his throat.

Light flashed off two kitchen knives as she flipped them around in her grip from where they had been hidden behind her forearms, their edges now bared and threatening. The man's eyes popped wide, but he was given no time to properly appreciate the danger - Xiao Yen flowed smoothly into a complicated form that seemed almost more dance than kata, blades weaving a complicated web as she stepped confidently between blocks, punches, and tendon-stretching kicks. The man inched back with a flinch at each near _swish_ of a knife, and jumped visibly at the occasional, odd, _"Hai!"_ that punctuated an air strike. By the time Xiao Yen had finished with a straight forward-kick that must have had her knee brushing her nose and settled into a long archer's stance, one knife tucked low near her hip and the other raised high like a scorpion's sting over her head, he was pressed against the jamb, face white and sweating. "I know kung fu," Xiao Yen stated, eyes narrowed, and somehow sounding not at all ridiculous in spite of her heavy accent. "Now - _go!"_

Even Sam jumped when the order was nearly drowned by the sudden clash of her blades ringing against each other, and the would-be antagonist let out an honest-to-god yelp as he fled backwards, barely managing to swerve around Sam and Danny on the way out.

Sam was still gaping when there was a much lighter clatter of the knives dropping to the ground, and Xiao Yen babbled a torrent of relieved-sounding Chinese as she gathered Eric into her arms, the boy hiccuping in his fear and excitement as he babbled his appreciation right back in English. Making his way over in a much more leisurely fashion than he had originally planned, Sam cleared his throat and tentatively noted as he nudged one of the discarded knives with his shoe, "Uh, we could've really used you out there, you know. You could've just fought them all off and saved us the trouble."

"What? No," Xiao Yen laughed, and only now could Sam hear the tremble beneath her voice. Looking more closely, he could see her hands shaking where they clutched her adopted son close. "I am no good! I do not know kung fu."

"You've got to be kidding me," Sam blinked. "That was, like, the most convincing performance of not-knowing kung fu I've ever seen."

Xiao Yen discreetly brushed at her eyes with a knuckle, still grinning the crazed grin of near-death survivors. "No, no ... I did some Tai Chi. With my grandmother, when I was very little. I do not know kung fu at all, nothing. I learn from you - yell a lot. Make myself big. They will run, because they are coward." She set her cheek atop Eric's hair. "I almost cut off my hand. I am not used to holding knifes when doing Tai Chi."

Sam dragged a hand slowly over his face. "God."

By the time the doctor and he had reassured themselves that no one else had managed to find their way into the rear corridors, the fight was already nearing its end. Surprised by the organized effort and larger force, only a handful of stragglers had the werewithal to retreat, taking the trucks with them and leaving behind a host of groaning and unconscious compatriots. When Sam finally worked his way back to the courtyard, people were scattered about with a vague air of astonishment and elation, the first disbelieving laughs beginning to transform into impromptu hugs and cheers when he heard someone calling his name.

"Yeah?" he answered, turning, and bodies shifted out of the way to allow Alec to limp into view. Sam could feel his brows rising at the man's battered state; the ex-foreman's arm was flung over a set of helping shoulders - what looked like a good half his face swelling into one big bruise - and they shuffled awkwardly up to him in a sort of three-legged stumble that even a pair of grade-schoolers could have handily beat. "Hey, whoa, maybe you should sit down - what happened to you?"

"Was payin' the devil's dues," Alec grunted, words smeared by a swollen lip, "I'm lucky he didn't decide t'collect all at once. Look, Sam, where's Tron?"

"What're you talking about?" Sam could feel his brow furrow, shoulders tensing automatically. "C'mon, at least sit down, someone get Danny - "

"Danny's already seen t'me, hadta sneak out from under that ornery fossil's nose. Just shut up and answer the question - where's Tron?"

"He's not here," Sam snapped between the twin irritations of having common-sense-help refused and the continuous goad of his conscience. "What's it to you?"

"You mean, what's it t' _you_ ," Alec growled, pushing away from his living crutch to fist his hand in Sam's jacket. "Whaddya mean he's not here?"

If the man wasn't so obviously unsteady on his feet, Sam might have felt more offended, but as it was, he had to cling to his pique to resist holding out a helping hand. "Look, I'm not his babysitter, and Tron's more than capable of taking care of himself - "

"Yeah? How 'bout Rinzler?"

Sam stopped and stared. "What're you talking about - " he pushed through numb lips before Alec gave him a little shake.

"Look, I don't know what games you're playing, and I don't know what sorta crazy science experiment all this was, but I'm not the only one who knows, now," the man hissed, voice pitched low against the loose circle of stares that have now fixed upon them. "I ain't proud of what I did but I'm sure as hell going to - "

It was only the strident voices around him that suddenly made Sam realize he had both hands clutched tight in Alec's collar, all but heaving the man off his feet in spite of their height difference. "What did you do - _what did you do!"_ he shouted desperately, barely giving way to the frantic hands trying to pull him back.

" - made it, Tron!" the foreman gasped, shame obvious even through his pained grimace as he turned his head away. "You said 'we made it, Tron' ... and he - "

Sam staggered, and the hands that had originally tried to hold him back abruptly turned bracing when he felt his knees go weak. "Oh jesus. What've you done ... "

Alec coughed, head hanging, face shadowed, and eventually rasped to the ground, "They beat it outta me. Wanted to know what the hell he was ... I would've come sooner, but I was unconscious when Tron dragged me back, didn't come to till now ... "

"He dragged you ... you told them ... "

"Danny told me it was him. Tron got to me before they - he brought me back. They know ... they know what you said to turn him back to ... to whatever he is when - "

Sam's stomach was rolling over as he shoved his way out of the tight knot of bodies, their confused and concerned faces a pale blur in the background. He was already digging through his pockets with shaking hands for keys before he remembered that he didn't need them, and then it became just a frantic scrabble to kick up the stand and screech out onto the streets, nearly fishtailing at the very first turn when he took it at full throttle.

 _Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid ..._

It was a constant litany in the back of his mind as he raced across the bridge, eyes watering from the cut of the wind, more afraid of being late than in navigating half-blind. Other half-formed thoughts clawed restlessly through the mental diatribe, such as why Alec had been targeted or how the gang had known to ask the questions they did and why why _why_ _now_ when they were right on the cusp of actually accomplishing something significant -

He was within sight of the radio station when the generators blew.

The initial bloom of fire almost licked the roof's corrugated edge, two stories overhead. Sam nearly skidded out at the wash of warmth across his face and left the motorcycle in a barely-controlled slide, stumbling hard enough to feel an unpleasant twinge in one ankle as he abandoned the still-rumbling bike in order to hit the ground running.

He could make out the bulk of a truck buried amidst the conflagration, drunken silhouettes just beginning to pick themselves up off the ground if he squinted. The flames were reluctantly confined thus far by the sea-damp grounds, but they had plenty of fuel and blazed eagerly atop their metal scaffold. Sam let his fury and desperation carry him to the first body within his fist's reach, and nearly fell over along with his target when the man folded at his blow without so much as a grunt. "Miles! Tron! Where are they!" he shouted over the fire's hungry cackle, and the man shook his head with a dazed noise, eyes rolling. Sam buried both hands in the man's collar, about to give him another shake, when a clamor began to arise near the bonfire - shouts, screams, and above all, a frightened, "We made it, Tron!" - and his head whipped sideways, eyes straining against the contrast of light and shadow.

One slender shape and two heavier forms faced off, so close to the conflagration that their outlines wavered with the heat. There was no need to try and pick out who they were by uncertain profiles alone; Tron - Rinzler - slinked forward like a stalking cat and sprang just as one of the gang members turned to run. By the time Sam had dropped his own catch and sprinted toward them, the prey were already silent and still upon the ground and the program was loping for the station's door.

"Tron! _Tron!"_ Sam called, feeling a different sort of panic begin to lodge uncomfortably beneath his ribs when the dark head didn't so much as turn his way. "Rinzler!" he switched, the name emerging as nearly a croak when he was forced to acknowledge that something might have become irrevocably broken, but then felt confusion slip in amidst the dread when that garnered just as much reaction ... that is, none at all.

It wasn't until Sam finally caught up from behind and nearly had his head taken off for laying a hand upon the program's shoulder that he realized what had happened. Rinzler barely pulled his blow in time, but the honest surprise in the normally flat gaze told him that the program hadn't even heard him coming.

Rinzler must have been practically next to the generators when they blew. Temporarily deafened, he had been immune to commands given by friend and enemies alike.

"Christ," Sam wheezed on half-hysterical laughter, but the reprieve was short-lived. Rinzler might have acknowledged Sam's right to be there simply by dint of letting him remain standing, but the program clearly had other objectives that took priority. Before Sam had even recovered from the dizzying relief of having the catchphrases rendered useless for the moment, Rinzler dove through the station entrance; just a lithe shadow streaking across the dusty floor toward the stairs and then leaping for the bannister, easily vaulting himself over and clearing half the steps in a single bound. Cursing, Sam was forced to round the flight in a more reasonable route, pulling himself up the steps three at a time.

Inside the station, the roar of the fire became a muted background thunder, the moon-striped interior almost cold by comparison; the worst of the bonfire's heat blocked by sheet metal that had yet to warm.

Any questions he might have had about the program's haste was answered when a body was thrown out of the broadcasting room as soon as he cleared the landing. Cracking an elbow painfully upon the jamb as his legs tangled with the feebly groaning man, Sam barely needed a glance to determine that it was not Miles - some of the gang's remnants had apparently fled into the building itself. Spitefully planting a knee into the man's gut as he fought back to his feet, he staggered into the room's proper, squinting, all that had been familiar made strange by the lack of fluorescent lights and the sullen, flickering glow leaking in from outside.

Rinzler stood crouched near the opposite end, oddly expectant, his dancing, spindly shadow like some hellish spider beside him ready to spring. A man lurked near the now-dark servers, one hand held threateningly above the machines with honed metal glinting, eyes wide and clearly white-rimmed even in the imperfect twilight. Sam straightened, stepped to the side of the door, and made sure that the man saw him before he called out boldly, "It's over!"

"Don't think so!" the man rasped, equally bold in his desperation, throwing an unshaven chin in Rinzler's direction as he noted, "He's still over there an' I'm over here, so there's somethin' you need else I'd already be laid out like Jake over there."

"If you do anything stupid, I guarantee you'll be laid out like Jake over there," Sam retorted. "Now come on. If you move away from there, he won't attack - "

"You think I'm dumb enough t' fall for that?" the man sneered. "I've seen him mopping up the others outside. These machines here're the only things keepin' me alive - "

"You wanna be stuck in a mexican stand-off all night?" Sam snapped. "Let's make this easy, all right? He backs up a step, you back off a step."

The man's eyes narrowed, speculative and strained.

Sam dared to hope. "Ready? Rinzler, move," he ordered, raising a hand - but even before he could make a motion for the program to fall back, Rinzler's forward foot was sliding grudgingly away ... and Sam saw the man's eyes gleam with feral satisfaction even as his own breath caught with sudden dread. "Rinzler, don't - !"

 _"We made it, Tron."_

Tron made no sound when the knife slipped beneath his ribs. Instead, the sound came from Sam - as if he had been the one stabbed instead - and then Tron's hands swept out - belatedly, clumsily - and the man reeled back with a pained grunt. Tron staggered, hunched, gasping ...

It seemed as if Sam had merely blinked, and then somewhere, in between, he was standing over the man that had Tron's blood on his hands, and his own knuckles were stinging as he reached down to twist his fingers in the stained, wrinkled collar.

Another blink and his knuckles were throbbing now, and the man was choking and spitting, trying to bring up the knife and Sam let go just long enough to clamp a hand upon that wrist, squeezing and squeezing -

 _\- blink_ \- the man writhed, gurgling as Sam felt heat wash thick and wet over his sleeve -

"Sam ... Flynn ... "

Sam's head jerked up, the whole room seeming to swim around him with the motion, and he suddenly realized he was panting, light-headed, the pins-and-needles of too much oxygen prickling at the tips of his fingers and toes. "Tron - " he croaked, surprised at the hoarse rasp of his voice, and staggered to his feet. "Oh god, Tron, are you - how bad is it?"

Tron had slumped down, half-propped against the makeshift server rack, breaths coming in shallow, fractured sips. As Sam dropped to his knees beside him, the program's eyes lifted, focusing with alarming sluggishness. "... don't ... user stats ... "

Sam choked down a bubble of laughter, afraid of what it would emerge as instead, taking only a single glance down - _oh, christ_ \- before he pressed the heel of his hand - _ignore the red already on it -_ against the seeping wound. "Shhh," he murmured as Tron made a small, pained sound, and reached up to stroke back sweat-soaked hair before trying to undo his shirt one-handed. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I know it hurts, but we have to slow the bleeding - " Frustrated by his own trembling, he simply yanked at the fabric when a button proved stubborn, ripping the entire row of them off.

Tron said nothing, merely filled the space between them with those too-fragile gasps, barely wincing this time when Sam finally wadded fabric over the tear and tied it tight with the shirt's sleeves. So Sam talked for them both as he worked, babbled mindlessly about how Danny will fix him up and Xiao Yen will spoil him with her cooking, and Eric will tell him all about his adventures that day and Sam will wait on him hand and foot though he'll probably draw the line at sponge baths -

He stuttered to a halt when there was a pressure upon his wrist, then froze as he glanced down and saw the USB key, caught between the program's thumb and the vulnerable skin above Sam's palm. "Save Quorra," Tron breathed, barely audible. "Save the Grid."

It might have been less painful if someone had simply reached into Sam's chest and wrenched the still-beating heart from it.

"They can wait," he babbled, "they'll wait - we'd _all_ wait for you, Tron. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I should've seen it sooner and sto - Tron? Tron, are you listening? Tron, answer me!"

Sam's throat was so dry he couldn't swallow as he tried to find the pulse with blood-tacky fingers, and when Tron's head lolled limply and there was no response, he called desperately, "Rinzler! Release Rinzler, release Rinzler, release - answer me, you son-of-a - !"

He sobbed with relief when there was the faintest jerk of the head - "Tron?" - then slipped into hysterical laughter as he realized it was the ghost of the alter ego's signature headtilt. "Rinzler, oh god, Rinzler ... stay breathing," he begged with breaking voice as he pressed their foreheads together. "Stay alive, stay breathing; acknowledge, acknowledge - god, please, acknowledge ... "

* * *

Tron's fingers stretched open and the disc dropped from his grasp. Its lights flickered, went out, and though it bit edgewise at the ground, it did not rebound. The ID rolled waveringly past a puddle of loose voxels - equally dim and lifeless - before hitting the windows' low sill and finally tipping over ... and Sam released a shaking breath, wondering fleetingly if programs experienced shock as he stepped gingerly across the room, everything over almost before he had made any sense of it at all. "Jesus. Tron? Are you all right?"

The dull look upon the program's face did not waver, but at least his head rose in acknowledgment of sorts. Sam took the opportunity to slide around the remains of what had once been a load balancing operator - a winsome female with slanted, sloe eyes - and pushed tentatively upon Tron's shoulder. "C'mon, snap out of it. Give me a status update."

Tron moved stiffly to the seat Sam directed him to, inelegant only in part due to the livid cut gleaming upon his hip. He did not respond at first, gaze sliding back to the crumbled program remnants, and only spoke when Sam rested a hand upon the empty port between his shoulderblades. "Why did you bring me back."

With both of Tron's discs sequestered in quarantine while he assessed the extent of Clu's rectification code, Sam could only put in a patch job for now. Temporary as it may be, he still laid down each line of stop-gap coding with more attention than was strictly necessary, rationalizing that it was care rather than avoidance that prompted his sudden thoroughness. "Why shouldn't I have? You saved us - the entire Grid - at the moment when it really counted."

"It appears that some would disagree with you."

Sam's mouth tightened, straining to keep his eyes upon the flickering interfaces and their angry damage reports rather than stray to the evidence at which Tron was currently staring. "There's always going to be someone who complains, it's the same as in the user world, believe me. But someone trying to commit - to do what she tried to do ... " To approach under false pretenses, to draw her disc on an unarmed Tron with the intent to murder ... Sam wondered if he might not be experiencing a little shock himself. "That's an anomaly. A minority. The extreme. I never thought someone would ... I'll need to put some safeguards in until we sort out your discs and give one back to you ... "

"And is the only reason you restored me because you felt you owed me for that moment?"

The patch came online. Tron shifted as a less-glaring seam stitched itself across the damage in a brocade of hexagonal pixels. Sam threw an extraneous test at it to buy himself some time, still too off-center to navigate the verbal minefield he suddenly found himself in. "What's the matter with you? Dad told me stories, about how you fought in the MCP's games. Assuming that's all true, you played the MCP's pet gladiator and never stopped trying to find a way out of there - "

"That was different."

"Yeah?" Sam finally rounded the chair, deliberately interposing himself between Tron's distant gaze and the would-be assassin's remnants. "You were forced to do whatever an evil overlord wanted and fought in games where you derezzed a lot of innocent programs. You looked for the first chance to break free and when it came, you took it - "

Tron's eyes snapped upwards, expression wavering oddly between pained and nettled. "That is the determining variable. I was _forced_ \- "

"Just like Clu forced you to do all that again with his reprogramming - "

"Under the MCP I didn't _want_ it, not like I had under Clu - "

"Users call that _brainwashing_. You didn't _really_ want it, you were just made to think that way - "

Tron abruptly surged out of the chair, stance off-kilter when he was forced to favor his right hip, hunched enough by memories that their slight differences in height were leveled and they were now matched perfectly eye-to-eye. "How far does it go, then? When do I start bearing responsibility for myself? Am I to forever be little more than a mere script, without will or autonomy, shuffled between the users and Clu or the next system uprising?"

 _When are you going to start taking some responsibility for your own life, Sam? Are you going to forever lay the blame on your father and Encom?_

Sam swallowed at the reminder of all too similar words spoken by an all too similar voice, and lashed back through gritted teeth, "Well what do you want, then?"

Doubt and suspicion flickered across the eternally youthful version of his godfather's face. "What do I want? I fight for the - "

"That's what the users _directed_ you to do," Sam cut him off, squaring his shoulders as he stabbed a finger at a point just below the trademark 'T' and emphasized, "What do _you_ want?"

"My directive _is_ my desire, to do the users' bidding - "

"That's not a desire, that's propaganda for your latest master - "

"There is no logic behind your queries! You're asking for something I cannot give you - "

"I want you to stop thinking like a program and tell me what you _really_ want - "

"I _am_ a program! What am I supposed to be if not - "

"You just told me you're no script - no _puppet_ for either the users or Clu! Now you're saying you don't even want anything outside of their will - ?!"

 _"What I want is for you to leave me alone!"_

They both jumped at the declaration, even Tron looking surprised. A storm of emotions chased each other across the program's face - chagrin, anger, embarrassment, indignation - while Sam struggled to find something to say that was a little less awkward than the silence that followed, but managing nothing more intelligent in the end than a sullen, "Wow, it took some button-mashing to finally make you lose your cool."

Tron's brow furrowed before his gaze dropped to his open hands. "My ... my apologies. I did not understand ... what was that supposed to accomplish?"

Sam waved the apology away with an uncomfortable shrug. "Hell if I know. But _your_ user's the one who keeps ragging on me about it, so if you get a clue, drop me a note." When he noticed the glazed look at all the user jargon, he grimaced and relented, "Look, you're not alone, all right? We all have to do this - users, isos ... I guess basics too. It's not something you have to figure out right away - "

 _\- you don't have to make decisions about your entire life right this second, Sam, but -_

" - but I'm told that it's something we need to do eventually if we want to move on. To not make the same mistakes over and over again."

Tron frowned pensively down upon the deceased program's dormant ID. "These are Alan-One's words?" he asked as he leaned down to scoop up the disc. "I will meditate upon them."

As the program left, the disc borne as carefully upon his hands as if it were a user relic, Sam wondered if Tron might not beat him to the answer.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually wanted to put this out on the first day of the new year, but as these things often do, Real Life happened and I hadta put off a good chunk of it till the 2nd. But here it is!
> 
> I can't tell you how amazing this is - my first multi-part fanfic that I've finished EVAR. (Well, barring the epilogue, but I'll write up separate notes for why the epilogue even exists in the first place when it hadn't been in the original plans.)
> 
> Thank you to EVERYONE who reviewed, encouraged, even just chatted with me about random Tron stuff to keep the momentum going - I'm not embarrassed to admit that I write for people and not myself (I'm just as happy keeping the stories in my own head forever), and so you were all directly catalytic in bringing this thing into the real world.

It was dawn. Unlike other days, the hotel was silent, even most of the early risers still in bed, catching up on a sleep well-deserved. In the soft, forgiving light of morning, the torn garden patches and scattered debris acquired a mysterious, fey luster. Even the birds had returned; a few brave souls chirping in slow, lonely counterpoint from the scraggly vegetation in the sidewalk planters.

Sam's hands were still shaking.

 _" - don't have time to test his blood type now, but if we grab Cody, I know he's a universal donor - damn, keep him awake! I don't have machines here to support him if he slips under and goes further into shock - "_

 __"You need to eat something if you're not going to sleep."

Sam was too exhausted to do more than twitch at the sudden, gruff admonishment. In fact, even blinking was becoming something of a chore, and so he simply remained slumped against the doorjamb, head tilted at an awkward angle, one hip numb from being braced against the stone steps as he stared vaguely across the hotel courtyard.

 _The skin was clammy and cool to his touch, seemed paler than it had ever been on the grid. The blood that was smudged across it had dried to rusty black tracks, flaking off when Sam gently shook the head he had clasped between his hands. "Rinzler ... Rinzler, stay awake, buddy. You don't get to sleep on the job, now, c'mon ... " he chanted, trying to ignore the clink of stainless steel instruments, and was rewarded by the barest flutter of dark lashes, a glimpse of storm-blue beneath them._

 __Danny had never needed an invitation anyway, and the doctor lowered himself with grunts and wheezes, joints clicking as he finally settled just within the edge of Sam's peripheral vision. Though he was still in the same rumpled denim shirt and sweats as yesterday, he had at least doffed the smock with the disturbing stains that had eventually soaked its sleeves and edges. "Your friend's still breathing. Must have a stubborn streak a mile wide."

 _One hour, he had coaxed and cajoled, voice nearly hoarse, until Danny had said that he could finally let Tron rest. "Sleep," he had finally choked out, and battled the reflexive surge of panic when the face beneath him went slack and dead._

The sudden, vague surge of nausea might be from adrenaline. Or the lack of calories. Or simple gut deep fear.

"Lucky, too. Transfusion might've killed him. Maybe the anesthetics and antibiotics too. Who knows what could have triggered an anaphylactic reaction. Could've been dead in three minutes flat."

Danny's sour tone finally did what sympathy had not, and Sam half-turned, neck and shoulders creaking painfully.

"Finally got your attention, eh?" the old man regarded him sideways before snorting, gnarled hands dangling between his knees. "It's been a while since I've had my fingers in someone's abdominal or thoracic cavities. Maybe my memory was playing tricks on how things should look in there. But blood type testing? Those things're hard to confuse." He shook his head slowly, and Sam had to swallow, realizing that, for once, the doctor's gaze was not all that kindly. "I think you've got a story for me, son."

Sam's gaze skittered away as he knotted his fingers, shoulders tensing as he considered his choices. An itchy patch on his palm made him glance down, and he rubbed at the rusty streaks embedded in the creases ... and even as he wondered if the blood was from the man he had murdered or the friend he had nearly done the same to, his subconscious made the choice for him and the words were spilling from his mouth.

"You've heard of the company Encom, right ... ?"

By the time he finished, voice barely more than a thread, there were footsteps and sleepy murmurs sifting occasionally through the broken windows. Danny had sat through it all, silent and increasingly tight-lipped, the wrinkles on his forehead and jowls growing ever more pronounced. When Sam finally fell silent, the old man looked every one of his near-seventy years, head bowed and shoulders stooped.

"Maybe you're certifiable," he finally said, voice graveled with fatigue and regret, "but it'd make two of us, 'cause damn me if I don't believe every word you just said. Tron - Rinzler - I know he shouldn't exist, and even if a tenth of what you said was true ... that's still a tenth more than I think any other person could - shoould - swallow down.

"But to think that someone had that sort of technology, in their _basement_ , for twenty years. All this time ... how many things - people - it could've helped ... "

Sam swallowed as Danny's hands clenched, sinews stark and tight beneath spotted, papery skin, a terrible thought creeping between them like the mist curling through the buildings just beyond the courtyard. _Maybe it could have even saved the world as we had known it._

Danny braced his palms against his knees and pushed himself to his feet. This time there were no melodramatic groans; just the pop and strain of weary joints as he descended the last few steps and began to shuffle slowly across the courtyard, back hunched, hands clasped behind him. Sam watched until the doctor stopped at the gates, staring blindly at the weather-beaten facades across the street and the narrow strips of ocean between them, before he too levered himself up and limped on half-numb feet toward Tron's recovery room.

With patients filling the little infirmary and the nearest residential rooms occupied by spill-over, people had given up their places in nearly the entire wing to give them a buffer of peace and quiet, doubling up in other parts of the hotel. As a result, though voices rang all around him as clean-up efforts were begun, by the time Sam reached the unofficial medical wing, the air was nearly as hushed and undisturbed as it had been during the pre-dawn hours.

Sam paused with hand upon the doorknob, slowly swaying forward until his forehead rested against the painted wood. Tron had been given his own room so that he could be made as comfortable as possible, and someone had been assigned to sit with him in shifts to act as a monitor. Danny had kicked Sam out almost before he could volunteer, citing that he was in no condition to be of use at the time, but after the confession of so many improbable secrets in the broad light of day, Sam had a sudden, overwhelming need to reassure himself that Tron still existed. Visiting now, though, meant that he had to deal with whomever was currently on watch duty, and so, after a few bracing breaths, he finally turned the knob and nudged the door carefully open.

He blinked at the sight of Alec's battered features across the room's single bed. The man stiffened, surprise and consternation both flashing across his bruised features.

Anxiety immediately filled Sam's middle, though he was in no shape to sort out the proper questions and reasons. Reflex made the decision for him as he moved to close the door again without so much as a greeting.

"Sam, wait!"

The words had been softly hissed in deference to the unconscious patient, but sharp enough that Sam could not avoid hearing them. For a moment, he debated pretending that he had missed them anyway, but when there followed an almost plaintive, "Please," he suddenly found the thought of resistance even more exhausting than capitulation.

Alec watched as Sam closed the door and moved a chair to the opposite side of the bed, dropping heavily into it with a loud sigh. "What?" he eventually grunted, and the ex-foreman straightened defensively.

"Maybe ... we should talk about this somewhere else?" the man ventured quietly, gaze flicking toward the still figure between them.

Sam resisted the urge to follow that look and kept his gaze pinned upon Alec alone. "We won't wake him. And I don't know what the hell we're talking about, but if you'd rather have it out in the public cafeteria, lead the way."

A glimmer of the man's old pride reared in affront, but other than a stiffening of the un-damaged portions of his face, Alec did an admirable job of holding his tongue until the initial fire had passed. Sam might have felt a prick of remorse for goading the man, if he was not already so tired and heartsore. "No, you're right. If you're sure we won't bother him ... " A grimace, and Alec's gaze fell to the bandaged hands resting in his lap. "I needed to come clean with you. About what happened."

Sam could feel his eyebrows scrunching up, and wondered belatedly if this was something that he really wanted to tackle right now. But before he could make the decision either way, Alec suddenly took a deep breath and began, as if once the initial plug of reluctance had been removed, all the pressure from inside forced out the words, willy nilly, until there was nothing for either of them to do but to hold fast against the flood.

"When I first found my way here, there were only six people at the hotel, and one died that same week ... "

As the man explained the initial raids that had nearly wiped out their fragile store of supplies and left another two of their number in Danny's care, Sam slowly leaned forward to prop his elbows upon his knees, covering his face with his hands. Alec had made a deal with the devil, promising no resistance and a tithe of the hotel's scavenged supplies as long as the people were left alone. Only the original hotel occupants had known - Danny, Xiao Yen, Eric. The last two residents of that time had moved on from San Francisco, and never been heard from again.

"It had worked until now. People were safe. Rations were tight, but everyone was taken care of. And then you came - you two upset the balance. They wanted to teach you a lesson, so when you went to find a server - "

"You," Sam husked, unsure if he was feeling horror, resignation, anger, or even a grudging respect for the man's willingness too lay bare all his misdeeds. "You told them where we would be."

Alec made an abrupt, aborted movement, as if he would have thrown himself out of his chair to pace if he had still had two whole legs to stand on. But the man subsided after a muted hiss of pain, and after a moment, continued hoarsely, "Yes, I told them where they could find you. I wanted to make sure it was far away from the hotel. Things have been this way for so long that I didn't even think ... I never considered how much we'd grown. That we could defend ourselves, that maybe we didn't have to be afraid anymore.

"They told me it was supposed to be a lesson ... just a lesson. But you resisted, and they were badly surprised ... " A dip of his head in contrition, and he cleared his throat roughly. "Yesterday, they caught up to me. I was going to be the lesson this time. They wanted to know what they were facing, they weren't going to bargain anymore, and - "

"And you paid the devil's dues."

Alec looked up sharply, rueful and surprised, before he nodded. "Yeah. That's what I was doing. 'Cept your friend wrote me something of a blank check there, when he tracked me down. I don't know how or when he became suspicious, but damned if I ain't grateful for it."

Sam dug his fingers into scratchy eyes until phantom colors bloomed behind his retinas, then finally clutched his courage with both hands and straightened.

Positioned between the room's two windows, no direct light fell upon the bed, but the filtered sun still managed to pick out details from the soft pools of shadow. Tron's face was smooth, unlined, untroubled. The program - no, the man - tended to rise early, and so it was rare that Sam had seen his face in such repose. Cleaned up, bandages hidden beneath a borrowed shirt and thick bed covers, it was difficult to imagine that anything untoward had ever happened - except that Tron was oblivious where he had always been watchful; unaware, when curiosity alone had helped him absorb a new world in just the span of a few weeks. Even with the awareness that Tron's chest rose and fell with slow regularity, Sam had to resist the urge to check for breath and pulse.

"We're all paying up to the devil right now," he whispered.

Alec shifted. "Sam ... I'm sor - "

"Don't!" Sam interrupted shortly, folding his hands over his face again with a grimace. "Just - please, don't. Not right now."

A creek of wood, limping shuffles, and then a shadow fell briefly over him. "I'll ... if you need anything, I'll be back later, all right?"

Sam waited until he heard the door click shut behind him, then waited a few heartbeats more as he tried to sort through all that roiled inside him.

"I used to be so angry with Dad. Wondering why he hadn't come back. How he could make all those promises with no way of keeping them. For leaving me only his company and his games and toys.

"Then, after everything on the Grid, I was angry about all the stupid things he could have avoided, that kept us apart for twenty-plus years, and then, when we were finally together again, it was for just a few hours before he was gone for good.

"But I guess it wasn't as easy as it sounds, or maybe the apple didn't fall that far from the tree, 'cause I can't believe that I was so ... so blind, so stupid, to have let all of this happen ... that I -

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I kept bringing Rinzler out. I'm sorry I didn't listen to you. I'm sorry - I'm sorry I didn't understand that you were - that I didn't take care of you. That _you_ needed _me_ even more than I needed you.

"I swear to God, if you give me the chance, that I'll do better. That it won't be about the Grid, or even electricity, or getting back anything that we - that I lost, that it'll just be about this world, how it is right now, the people that are here - "

His voice broke then, and Sam gave a convulsive swallow before he reached out impulsively, lanyard tangled between his fingers, USB drive dangling beneath his palm. Tron's hand was reassuringly warm when he clasped it, but there was no response when he squeezed, and he shivered before snatching his hand away once more; leaving the drive resting upon the lax fingers.

"I'm sorry, Alan ... and thanks. Thank you ... for everything," he mumbled, throat constricting, a terrible ache filling his chest at having not thought of his godfather until now, and only when Sam had nearly ruined his handiwork. "We made it, Tron," he whispered, the words coating his tongue like ashes as he pushed himself to his feet and stumbled for the door.

A practice run, he told himself in the end. This was only a practice run. Surely even he could display as much courage as Alec had, in confessing to a conscious subject. This would simply be where Sam would begin - and, hopefully, he would have all the years to come to finish making amends.

* * *

"Tron's awake."

Sam couldn't quite suppress the tensing of his shoulders, but was fairly pleased with the evenness of his tone as he answered, "Yeah, I know."

Danny was no doubt eyeing him narrowly in the ensuing silence, but with his head bent over the rope that he was knotting and re-knotting, Sam weathered the stare with few ill effects but for an insistent itch between his shoulderblades.

"I find it hard to believe that you're here instead of at his bedside, then."

Sam squinted at the black-and-white drawings in the guide book, trying vainly to follow the casual loops and whorls, before finally giving up and untangling his line to start all over again, flipping the page back to the beginning of the lesson. "We chatted. He sounded tired. I thought I'd let him rest."

"He is currently enjoying Xiao Yen's fish soup," the doctor harrumphed as he creakily perched himself upon the step next to Sam, bald pate already lightly pinked by the un-filtered rays from a noon-day sun.

Sam let the nylon rope drop from his fingers with a sigh, bracing his hands against his hips to stretch his back with a crackle of vertebrae. "Fine, the conversation didn't go that great, and I thought I'd take a break."

"You fought?"

Sam shook his head, grimacing as he slumped over to lean his forearms against his knees, scrubbing his face. "No, we didn't fight. He was just ... different. Strange. Maybe it's the drugs, maybe he's still recovering, I don't know - I just couldn't stand it anymore and needed some space."

He expected Danny to pull out some ancient Chinese proverb at that point, or maybe even some more practical-minded American witticism; but when the doctor finally deigned to speak after a long and pregnant pause, it was to muse, "Perhaps his brain is rearranging itself."

Sam dropped his hand from his face to squint disblievingly at the man. "Excuse me?"

"The mind's a funny thing," Danny continued, unperturbed by his audience's blatant skepticism. "Even in adulthood, it changes and adapts, shifts things around, compensates and optimizes. Whatever your friend was in a computer, with all those discrete 1's and 0's, he's not that anymore. He's got biology now, and biology is messy and fluid and tends to find a way around obstacles. My guess is that that switch of yours won't matter, eventually. From what you're describing, he's already getting around it."

Sam looked away, covered his mouth, and tried to swallow the dread that abruptly fluttered in his stomach. "So what does that mean? That Tron and Rinzler's personalities are ... will mix together? Merge? Or that he'll just end up schizo?"

"Technically speaking, bipolar or MPD would be a more accurate diagnosis than schizophrenia, but quite honestly, I don't know," Danny shrugged. Ever since Sam had revealed all, the doctor had dropped the grandfatherly act around him; there were no more attempts to sugar-coat the facts with optimism. "One can only hypothesize, observe, and hypothesize again until he reaches an equilibrium."

Sam pinched the bridge of his nose, mentally poked and prodded at this new knowledge, before it finally seemed to settle and he could state with reasonable confidence, "All right. That's okay. I can deal with it."

"Alone?"

Sam snuck a peek sideways without moving his head and crooked an eyebrow inquiringly at Danny's expectant look. The doctor motioned with a knobby hand toward the half dozen wilderness survival books that were stacked by Sam's foot, pilfered from local stores and libraries. "Oh."

"Also, Alec told me that you were planning on leaving."

"Why would he - "

"He was concerned about Tron's health and thought I should talk to you."

Sam scowled and repeated with a completely different emphasis, "Why would he - "

"Give the man some credit," Danny deadpanned with a slap of his hand across the back of Sam's head. "He used to be a foreman, and he took care of his crew. It was as much his responsibility to spot problems before they became problems as to follow up on anything that actually went wrong."

Sam grumbled but left his head bowed, accepting the wisdom and chastisement, absently scraping the ruffled hair back and mildly surprised by how thick the locks had become after just a few months. "Well, it's not like I'm planning on dragging Tron out of here before he was fully healed - "

"Why drag him out of here at all?"

"'Cause it's not safe here for him," Sam answered bluntly. "Not anymore."

One of the hotel's two meeting rooms had been converted into a temporary jail, where all the gang members that had been left behind had been dumped after Danny had treated them. There they had stayed for the past two days while the residents tried to decide what to do about them.

Sam had taken his own turn at guard duty yesterday, after he had finally managed some sleep. He had looked at their sullen faces and remembered the way it had felt to punch a blade through living flesh, and reminded himself that each and every one of them now held the knowledge to destroy Tron in just a handful of words.

* * *

Three weeks later, their bags were packed by their feet, the sky was overcast though the temperature had risen to bearable levels, and every one of the hotel residents had crowded into the courtyard into a loose half-circle around them.

Tron had been mobile long before that, but Sam used the excuse of extra survival training to delay until he received surreptitious notice from Danny that Tron should be fit enough to travel. The doctor had been mutely amazed by the man's recovery - the wound was even giving all indications that it would heal cleanly without a scar. It was an unexpected blessing for which Sam was grateful ... at least there would be no physical reminders of yet another traumatic moment in the man's life.

"Thanks for your help," Sam said as he clasped Alec's hand. The foreman had been instrumental in interviewing all the residents and finding them two people who had in-depth knowledge of long-term camping. Between crash courses with the experts, book references, and one or two raids of the larger outdoor sporting stores in the city, Tron and Sam were as prepared for their journey as they could be without actual experience under their belts.

They would take only what they could comfortably carry themselves. The temptation might have been to take a vehicle, but with no steady supplies of gas to be depended on, more likely than not they would eventually be stranded somewhere. Instead, Sam had spent his spare time setting up as many vehicles for the community's use as possible - the supply would not last forever, but it would be up to them to transition to something more renewable before they ran out of usable transportation.

"It was the very least I could do," Alec said solemnly, not quite meeting his gaze though his grip was firm. The bruises have vanished by now, though he still limped occasionally on particularly cold mornings. "I wish there was more that I could have done."

Sam's mouth tightened, but he managed a sincere enough nod and a last squeeze of hands before he turned to the doctor. "Thank you. For ... for everything," he said as earnestly as he could.

Danny didn't look happy, but unlike the others, it seemed to have less to do with goodbyes and leavetakings than simple uneasiness. Sam followed the slant of his gaze to see Tron just a few feet away, leaning over so that a tearful Xiao Yen could throw her arms around him in a tight hug, when the doctor murmured gruffly for his ears alone, "Tron's a protector, but what Rinzler is, is a weapon. I'll always be grateful for what you've done for us, the both of you, but I would sleep easier if he was under observation while he worked through all that than knowing you two were gallivanting all over the countryside causing all sorts of trouble."

Sam's mouth quirked, tight and pained. "Sorry, old man. We've got places to go, things to see ... you know how it is."

Danny harrumphed, then relented, wrinkles sagging as his expression softened. "He needs more protein than most folk," he admonished with a gentle prod at Sam's shoulder over their clasped hands. "Make sure he learns to figure out what his body's craving and gets an extra helping of that when he needs it. You've already figured out the extra caloric requirements part. If his brain's doing mental gymnastics, he might need more sleep than usual, and I don't know if he dreams or what he dreams about, but make sure you duck if you need to prod him awake, hear? I won't be around to patch you boys up again if you do something stupid."

Sam snorted, but was forced to squeeze his eyes closed as he tugged the old man near and gave him a fierce hug. "Yeah, pops, I'll make sure he's tucked into bed with a glass of warm milk by 10 every night, promise," he gibed before letting go.

By the time he rejoined Tron, the man was down on one knee before the community's youngest resident. Eric's face was set into angry, sulky lines around red eyes and cheeks already blotchy from tears. "I thought you liked it here ... "

Tron placed a hand upon one small shoulder as he might have on any adult, and addressed the boy just as solemnly, "I wish I could stay - "

"Then why don't you!"

"This is not a decision that I can make as I wish."

Sam paused behind him, frowning upon his friend's back as sudden doubt gnawed at the back of his mind. When he had broached the subject of leaving to Tron two weeks ago, the man had frowned and looked away. But after what had seemed to be simply a moment of introspection, he had agreed readily that it was the best course. Had Sam simply been fooling himself again?

"But - but you can do anything, Tron! Why don't you just - "

"I cannot fight everyone all the time, Eric," Tron noted more firmly, ducking just a little bit further so that he could meet the boy's gaze on a level. "I would like to remain here, but I do not want to be on constant alert, wary of what could be said in my hearing and if it would be used against me or those near me. It's time that I established my own parameters, instead of having them written for me."

Sam released a long breath, reassured. Clearing his throat diplomaticcally as he took the last two steps to join them, he hazarded to his friend in aside, "Uh, remember, limited dictionary and syntax rules, Tron. He might not have understood all that."

"I un'erstand he's going when he doesn't wanna!" Eric shouted, making Sam wince with a placating show of hands and Xiao Yen rushed over to scoop up the boy with apologetic noises.

But Tron was already nodding with an enlightened expression, and reached into a pocket as he stood to tug out the USB drive. Sam stilled, mouth dry, as the man looked his way, gaze inscrutible.

"It's your choice," Sam eventually managed, voice wavering only a little, tearing his eyes away from that innocuous square to meet Tron's gaze as unflinchingly as he could. "I gave it to you. It's yours, and you get to do whatever you want with it."

Tron inhaled and bowed his head. Then he turned to Eric, and when he reached to take one of the boy's hands and the child stubbornly snatched it away, he said sternly, "Eric." The boy froze, even his sniffles temporarily stifled, and did not rebel this time when Tron opened his small fist and laid the drive upon his palm, closing the chubby fingers over it. "Inside here is a world," he said soberly, attention fixed upon that small grip, "filled with pro - with people. Some are warriors like I was, and some are like you and the others in this hotel - citizens just trying to fulfill their purpose. It is the world that I came from - it is what used to be my home."

Eric blinked owlishly at Tron and then peeked at the cracks between his fingers, as if he might spy glimpses of these miniature kingdoms and populations if he squinted hard enough. "All that's in here?"

"Yes. Everything is in there," Tron confirmed. "Sam tried to bring it back for me - " Sam had to bite his tongue to keep from interrupting the narrative with his guilt, and exhaled only when his friend cast him a sidelong glance of forgiveness, " - but we were defeated, and it is not safe right now to try again. Will you keep this for me until the time comes to make another attempt?"

Eric struggled visibly with the honor of being knighted for the task. "If I don't, will you stay?" he bargained, and Sam stifled a laugh while Xiao Yen gasped in consternation.

"No," Tron forestalled any Chinese scoldings which might have followed, his attention still fixed solely upon the boy. No wonder Eric had so fixated upon him - there were probably few, if any, who gave a child such concentrated regard. "But then I will be forced to find somewhere else to keep this safe."

"I'll keep it safe!" Eric abruptly blurted, unable to help himself, and tucked his fist tight between his body and his foster mother's. "Forever and ever. Will you show me when you get back? All the stuff inside it."

Tron's brow furrowed. But where a natural-born human might have lied, made empty promises for the sake of fleeting reassurance, he simply stated, "I am doubtful. There are many variables involved in reviving this sort of technology, and the odds are against it. But should the possibility ever exist - yes, Eric. It would be my pleasure to take you to the Grid."

And perhaps that was the way things should be done after all, because instead of wilting under all the impossibilities, Eric only straightened beneath the challenge. "Okay. I'll keep it safe. And don't take a long time coming back."

This time Xiao Yen's exasperation was immediate and florid, and Sam laughed out loud while Tron tilted his head, perplexed by what was so improper about the boy's response.

* * *

The sun was well on its way to zenith when they turned to cast one last wave of farewell to the hotel. Some of the residents had already dispersed, but enough remained that they still clogged the courtyard entrance, their arms swaying like tall grasses high over their heads.

Sam swallowed and turned away, using the excuse of adjusting his plaid bomber's hat forward to bow his head and blink his eyes clear. Beside him, Tron automatically matched his stride, face turned into the cool breeze skipping over the bay's waters, eyes narrowed against the glare of sunlight off the waves.

"Sam, tell me about your sea ... "

* * *

Sometimes he dreamed of impossibly smooth landscapes, made of shadows and cool, candy-toned light. Sometimes it was the Ducatti's growl beneath him as the wind carded through his hair.

Sometimes he dreamed he said, "We made it, Tron," and Alan would tilt a brow ironically and respond, "Of course we did." And sometimes he was eating buttered popcorn while watching HD movies from his couch, Quorra's laughter ringing in his ears.

Sometimes ... sometimes he dreamed of nothing. And somehow, that was more terrifying than anything else. Because those were the mornings in which he woke up thinking that maybe it was better that way ...

That it was better to have never dreamed at all.


	10. EPILOGUE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Originally, TDD was supposed to end on a whooooooole different track. There wasn't supposed to have been a hotel or community. It would've been the relentless wasteland exactly a la Mad Max as the prompt had called for. There was even one particular piece of dialogue that I had actually written out - but then I had a completely different idea, TDD swerved off those tracks, and none of that came to be. 
> 
> Then I made the mistake of showing that AU of my AU to Winzler after going lol look at what TDD was supposed to be.
> 
> Well, needless to say, she enabled, and parts of what I'd envisioned actually seemed plausible for something that occurs well after TDD's main storyline. But, rather than extending it into 50 thousand chapters, I put it into an epilogue instead. In truth, it totally violates the whole angst of the prompt (though I guess it's more bittersweet than truly hopeful), but whatever, I do what I want! :D
> 
> Hope you enjoy, and thank you, EVERYONE, for all of your wonderful support throughout this endeavor! <3

Deep within the cool, concrete bowels of the stadium, he could feel the pulse of the crowds outside like the familiar, rhythmic chant of his name within the Grid.

_"This ... this doesn't have to be so different, Sam."_

_"What are you talking about?"_

_"There were factions then, too. The ISOs, before the ... before The Purge. The Basics. The rebels and revolutionaries. Clu, and those attempting to curry his favor, and even within them, there were subclasses with their own motivations - "_

_"Yeah? And how'd all that work out for you?"_

_"We played the games."_

And, just like then, it was the rare moment that he made a personal appearance now. As the years had passed, the challengers had dwindled even as his reputation swelled, until only a hot-headed new generation or an immigrant from another territory would come to test the legend for themselves.

_" ... you can't be serious."_

_"On the contrary. I can't be anything but."_

_"Look, maybe Clu was my father's copy, but I sure as hell ain't gonna walk in either one of their footsteps - "_

_"Aren't you? Why did you try so hard to rebuild the Grid?"_

_"Look, that was a mistake, all right? I wasn't think - I was too tied up in Quorra, and the others, and ... God, Tron. Is this what it's about? Do you miss the Grid?"_

Eighteen years. Such a timespan was little more than a lightsailer flight compared to all the cycles of his total up-time, but somehow, they had attained a weight and _luster_ that nothing from before could compare to. His recall no longer had the edge-sharp fidelity that it had once held, but even with the inherent uncertainties of analog translations and messy, imprecise biology, there was still something about the real world that gave even the most innocent moments an immediacy and depth that he still struggled to define.

_"I do, like nothing I have ever experienced before. But this isn't about that, Sam. I have a purpose here too. There is something here that I can protect."_

_"So you're going to fight again? There aren't any users or programs anymore, you know. You're just one of us, now. Is this really what you want, to go back to that?"_

_"Maybe I'd never left it behind."_

"Eight months."

"That's at least the second longest record," Tron pointed out with a quirk of his mouth as he stood to face his friend.

Sam still refused a walking aid, though the wet season seemed to be playing particular havoc with his limp this year. The Flynn's pride was still the stronger for now, though, and the man - grayed hair pulled back in a tail, face lined and grim - strode through the locker room with shoulders squared and a pace that many perfectly able-bodied people might have found hard to match. 

It was easier than ever to see the Kevin in him now ... just as it was equally easy to see that the elder Flynn was not the only influence. Genetics had been explained to Tron in Year Three, along with the laws of inheritance and theories of nature vs. nurture, but he sometimes still couldn't shake an inherent belief that Sam was simply a direct cross-product of his father and mother's characteristics. More and more, he had begun trying to filter out what might be Jordan, and in moments of whimsy, he tried to guess at what the woman might have been like.

"If this one had held off for another two months it could have been _the_ record," Sam retorted waspishly, swinging around Tron to check the ties that held the padded armor in place. "Better yet, he could have held off altogether and we'd still be counting."

"At least we have ample warning this time," Tron tried at cheek only to have Sam prod mulishly at the neatly stitched line over his brow. "Ow! Hey!" he swatted the hand away with a scowl. "What was that for?"

"I don't care that the challenger's actually _challenging_ you this time, I'd rather there not be any challenges at all anymore!" Sam snapped back, taking the two steps toward the stave that he had leaned against a locker door and tossing it to him. "Maybe next time the guy with the gun won't be such an obligingly bad shot."

"He was not a bad shot, I was just that much better," Tron grumbled, catching the staff with one hand and gingerly feeling along the sutures with the other.

"Oh, right, forgive me, how could I forget we're talking about The Champion here?" Sam rolled his eyes. "Stop that, it's not bleeding, I don't know why you're worried about it, it's not like it's even going to scar."

"I'm _not_ ," Tron huffed as he gave the staff a few experimental swings to re-learn its heft. "Besides, I have it on good authority that girls prefer a marked man."

"What, the good authority of _one_? And they're _women_ , Tron, not 'girls' - " Sam smirked, earning himself an eyeroll in turn before they both paused at the change in pitch of the audience's muffled shouts. "Looks like it's showtime," the Flynn murmured.

"Who is the challenger?"

Once upon a time, the shift of priorities had been a conscious switch between processes; a rapid background shuffle that suspended non-essential threads and re-weighted others, as easy and sure as flicking a switch between pre-programmed modes. Now, he could still _sense_ the drop of unnecessary overhead, the calm that preceded a sharpening focus on the sensory input that told him - _weight texture grip friction force momentum position projections_ \- all that he needed to fight and to win. But it was tied to variables that weren't always under his control anymore ... the rumble of raised voices. The skin-prickling sensation of a stare held too long. The flash of light upon shaped or honed metal. Sometimes, even, a dream.

"Some kid named Alec Yenson. From the west."

A ripple of surprise and concern skated across the calm, but his footsteps never faltered. "The west?"

"The _far_ west, his registration says." Sam's voice lowered, brow furrowed only partially due to the wash of late afternoon sunlight streaming through the end of the tunnel. "There was some vague BS grievance about stolen property or something; Sara says he kept dodging the details when he registered."

"Most of the challengers lately only want the challenge. They've made up plenty of excuses - "

"Yeah, but they say they're from the New England territories with some beef about where the borders are drawn, or the Panhandle, or the South - they don't say they came the long way across the continent to settle some misdemeanor."

"It's hard to pull an ambush in a formal challenge in the middle of the stadium," Tron argued with a pointed tap of his staff's end upon the hard floor - there were few weapons he was as well versed in, and certainly many more the challenger could have chosen that were deadlier.

"Yeah, well, still, keep your eyes open."

"I always do," Tron chided, as Sam fell back and he stepped alone out into the light.

The stadium was smaller than the one on the Grid, but even so, it was nowhere filled to capacity. Packed in elbow-to-elbow, knee-to-back, bodies occupied the seats barely halfway up the soaring bleachers. But there was that same connection between himself and the audience regardless of the venue, that frission of borrowed energy skating along nerves and skin, and he barely needed the momentary lull when they focused upon him as prompt before he brought his staff down twice upon the ground - _clack clack_ - and thrust it high above his head.

Their voices exploded around him like the surf in winter, like the storms in summer, funneled up and in by the stadium's bowl until the stamp of feet and roars of approval settled somewhere just beneath his disphragm, throbbing in time to his heartbeats. 

_Stomp, stomp - "Rin-zler!" Stomp, stomp - "Rin-zler!_ " _Stomp, stomp - "Rin-zler ... !"_

Eighteen years of practice, and the best he could estimate his opponent's age at is somewhere to the left or right of the twenties. One of the most difficult concepts he had initially tried to grasp was the effect of time and weathering; that nothing in the real world was constant or permanent, and instead of helpful tags and public declarations, he had to guess from a dozen visual cues - that varied even between individuals - just how much experience a person had accumulated throughout their life.

The young man stood tense and ready, anxious as if this was his first match, but his grip loose and practiced, rather than deathly tight. From the angle at which he held the staff, he possessed eastern martial arts training, and Tron shifted his own hold to match.

Alec Yenson had the lightly bronzed skin of the fair complexioned that spent long weeks beneath the sun, hair cut raggedly at shoulder-length, held back by a red and yellow kerchief tied over the top of his head and the padded circle of an open helmet. He had the rangy figure of someone who was well accustomed to the outdoors beneath the set of borrowed armor, and when Tron met his gaze and held it, he did not flinch, look away, or bluster.

Satisfied that this would be a serious match, Tron halted a precise six feet away, slid one foot back, and waited. Alec's brow furrowed as the crowd's chant devolved into an expectant roar, his eyes flicking furtively to the sides, and Tron couldn't help tipping his balance just a little bit further over his toes, wondering who or what the boy was looking for. Perhaps Sam was right after all, and there was an ulterior motive behind the challenge? 

"Wait - when do we start?" Alec asked as he shifted to match Tron's stance, stiff and uncertain.

Time to flush the real game out, then, if there truly was another one being played here. "Now," Tron declared flatly as he whipped the end of his staff toward the boy's ribs.

* * *

Two years, Sam and Tron had wandered across the continent. 

They had gone south, first, and observed the cracked, glassine crater of LA from the crests of the distant hills, and Tron learned about the bits that made up the real world which the users called 'atoms'. Except, here, even those were not indivisible, and he remembered what awe was with Sam's revelations as they turned away from the City of Angels, now just one of many similar sights scattered across the world.

In Year Zero, Tron saw his first deer, his first mountain lion, his first moose ... and subsequently had to run from said moose when he misjudged its antlers as vegetation before it raised its head with an irritable bellow. He saw geese flying in orderly formations and his first herd of bison; great, shaggy silhouettes snorting steam, wandering placidly through the mist-laden trees. 

Year One-point-two, he saw his first snow-fall, learned that even animals knew how to steal, and that a bear could climb to astonishing heights before the branches began to give way. 

He heard the ululating threads of the wolves' howls, echoing between the mountains. Sam earned his limp, and Tron was forced to kill the first lupine he had ever laid eyes on.

There were people too, though many of them narrowly escaped the classification of 'animal' only by dint of their bipedal stature, while others were sometimes indifferent, and the remainder astonishingly kind. Tron continued to struggle with his other self, the one that only thought in numbers and statistics and tallies of wins and losses, and he became accustomed to the fact that in user bodies, the mind never rested completely, even during sleep.

In Year Two-point-one, he began learning from people other than Sam; that humans had figured out how to turn away violence without becoming violence themselves, that there were dozens of disciplines in which the goal was protection and incapacitation, not death or humiliation. Sam had looked alternately tickled and appalled at the enthusiasm with which Tron had tackled such pursuits, but covered his eyes and could manage no words when, one day, he called for Rinzler ... and Rinzler did not answer.

Rinzler did not answer, but it was still there; in that quiet where unnecessary thoughts did not wander, in the knife-sharp clarity that rivaled the Grid's own digital precision. It was the rapid, economical shuffle of data and extrapolations, the constant prioritization and re-prioritization of factors compared to the primary directive of _victory_ ... and currently, 'victory' was synonymous with survival, and survival meant putting down his opponent as quickly as possible so that he may face the hidden threats undistracted.

The boy was trained, and he was daring. He was fit and he was fast. But he fought to win, not to _live_ , and Tron knew down to the flex of the smallest muscle how much force he needed to bring to bear for the type of damage he wanted to inflict, at what speed and what angle, and he hammered away at the youth's defenses until his opponent was stumbling back with white-knuckled hands, struggling to maintain his grip against the jarring vibrations of badly-managed blocks - 

Tron swung, feinted with a sweep for the legs, exposed his back as Alec tensed for a leap ... and jerked his arms back in a seemingly blind jab, except he was prepared for the meaty _thump_ of the staff's end striking home and the choked gasp that followed. He did not wait for the boy to finish falling before he hooked the staff from nerveless fingers, flinging it spinning over his shoulder, and glazed eyes had barely rolled up to find his when his weapon's weathered end was pressed to a desperately working throat.

"Who are you waiting for?"

Alec wheezed, coughed, and held his hands up in the universal sign of surrender. "Don't know ... what the hell you're talking 'bout ... "

Tron leaned in fractionally and the boy squirmed, alarm finally widening his eyes. "You were looking for something or someone earlier - "

"A referee! God, was just lookin' for a ref - !" he gasped against the unyielding wood, and Tron frowned, wondering how seriously he should take such an excuse, when the boy bared his teeth and rasped, "We made it, Tron ... or did we?"

Tron felt the breath freeze in his lungs, and though he was certain he had not moved, something in his expression had the boy abruptly holding his hands up in renewed penitence, rapidly croaking, "It's okay, it's okay, I'm one of the good guys, you don't have to be afraid - !"

Tron understood irony well enough by now to have to force down an inappropriate laugh at the last assurance. It was just disorienting enough that he did not crush the boy's throat out of sheer reflex, and allowed him time to gather himself to demand, _"Who are you."_

The boy swallowed thickly, expression abruptly earnest and hopeful. "Eric," he rasped, no games and no hesitation this time, and Tron did not need his formerly eidetic memory for the connections to begin snapping into place. "Eric Yen. Son of Xiao Yen. From - "

" - the west. The far west. You're from San Francisco," Tron breathed.

* * *

"You weren't really going to kill me, right?"

"I should have, with that stunt you pulled," Tron tried to pull his Rinzler face, but even without Eric's unrepentant smirk as evidence of his failure, he could feel the muscles pulling inexorably at the corners of his mouth.

"Yeah, you have me totally convinced," the boy - young man, now, at twenty-three years - eyed the colorful flags and drapes now lining the stadium field. As had become tradition in the monthly challenges, once all grievances - and bets - had been settled, one could set up stands and tents to take advantage of the gathered people for trade. The words 'carnival' and 'festival' have been bandied around, but Tron had little more than a single photograph in a book to compare the actual experience to.

"There has only ever been two fatalities, and one was an accident while the other had been a genuine attempt at murder." In spite of the grim subject, though, even Sam couldn't help smiling wide enough to near split his face as he clasped Eric's hand. "We try to keep things lively, but it only stays fun and games 'till someone loses an eye," he nodded toward the safety equipment now piled to the side.

"'Till someone loses an eye'," Eric snorted. "Do people really say that?" he began in aside to Tron, but before he could even manage a shrug in response, the young man's brows were quirking upward. "Oh, uh, right, I guess you wouldn't know."

And Tron suddenly felt tight all over again, wary and anxious like he never was in the arena, and he watched the young man's sober glance between them as he asked, "Eric. Earlier, what you said to me ... how did you - "

"Danny told me," Eric admitted slowly, and Tron caught the curl of Sam's hands into fists at the edge of his vision. "He ... he told me everything, about Encom, about Sam and his father, about the Grid. He wanted to make sure I knew, before I came, what I was getting myself into - "

"Tron - " Sam started, stopped, expression hesitant as he tried again, "I'm sorry, it was when you were hurt and Danny had just put you back together, and he was asking me all these questions about you - "

"It doesn't matter anymore," Tron tried to forestall them with a wave, suppressing a sigh. "It's been over a decade since it had last mattered. And Danny seemed like a good man - "

"He can barely hobble across the courtyard now and likes to terrorize anybody still shorter than his hip, but yeah," Eric grinned crookedly with clear fondness. "He never breathed a word of it to anyone. I never even suspected he knew anything more, until I was already packed up and ready to make my way east."

Which begged the question of just how Eric had tracked them down, but even more pressingly ... "Not that we aren't glad to see you again, but what are you doing here, Eric?" Tron asked carefully. "It's a long way from San Francisco."

Eric licked his lips, suddenly looking young and nervous. Digging clumsily beneath the collar of his hoodie, he grasped something that had been hanging around his neck and ducked out from beneath the lanyard.

The original strap had been replaced by a braided cord. From its middle dangled a small, black square, just a little bigger than the end of his thumb. Its thin, rubber casing had been worn down to shiny baldness - like a pebble rolled by ocean tide to perfect roundness upon a beach. Like someone had rubbed it between their fingers every day for the last eighteen years.

Tron still had no problem recognizing it, though, and from the sudden indrawn breath beside him, neither had Sam. Eric's eyes were fixed upon the device as well as he visibly swallowed, preparing himself, and suddenly burst out in a breathless rush, "You ... I still remember when you were there, when you'd been part of our family. I came to give this back to you - to tell you that I did it. The last census put us at close to sixty-thousand people, split between the farms in Napa and the San Francisco city limits - "

Tron felt his throat abruptly close in on itself. Sixty-thousand people in a single county ... more than had gathered at any one of these challenges, even coming from the entire Carolinas and their neighboring territories ...

" - and more are arriving every day, either through immigration or through births. We hold fairs, market days, even concerts, sort of. We have safe drinking water, electricity ... you should see the city lights at night, it's beautiful - "

A small sound escaped Sam, and Tron felt as if he were newly rezzed - still loading and integrating a new body and new commandments, trembling with fresh energy and the wide horizon of possibilities ...

" - and what I'm getting at is ... what I'm trying to say is - Tron, Sam, I think, I _hope_ , that it's been long enough. I came to ask if you'd like to go back with me ... 

"I came to ask if you would like to come home."


End file.
